It’s mid-November and Barbara Johnson explains that she’s yet to use her central heating since the winter started to draw in.
The 81-year-old says it has only been turned on once for five minutes, just to check that it is still working. To keep away the cold she’s been living solely in her front room, the room she can afford to keep the warmest while the rest of her house is “freezing cold.”
“It’s one of the more challenging situations I've found myself in,” Barbara tells the ECHO in high spirits, “I was living quite comfortably before all of these bills come in.” A £2,500 energy price cap freeze was introduced in September, but this figure is almost double what the average household would have been paying 12 months ago.
