“Housing, health, energy provisions: We need to connect a little bit more those things.”

Since the energy crisis started a few years ago, we hear more often about energy or fuel poverty. But how often do we talk about the concrete challenges and also the coping strategies of the people affected by it? And what does it mean for people’s health when they live in very cold or very hot homes?

Our guests today are two brilliant researchers from the University of Leeds: Lucie Middlemiss and Beverly Searle. They have been leading the qualitative data collection in the WELLBASED project, looking at how people in energy poverty felt in their homes, how they dealt with limited access to energy and how this impacted their health and wellbeing. In our conversation Lucie and Beverley share their invaluable insights from over 150 qualitative interviews with people across six cities. We discuss the fragile health condition of people in energy poverty and try to untangle the many complex reasons for it. And when it comes to the solutions, local authorities definitely have a role to play.

📅 And if you’re keen to discuss more about this topic of fairer energy services and healthy homes, you may be interested in joining us in Valencia on 20 February 2025 for the WELLBASED Final Event. Not only you will be able to meet the 18 partners from 10 countries, incl. municipalities, but you’ll also hear more about our real-life interventions and how we can better bridge research, practice and policy to bring lasting change.

You can find more information on the event and all reports and findings on the WELLBASED website www.wellbased.eu WELLBASED is co-funded by the European Horizon 2020 program.

🎧Check out also the previous episode with Lucie Middlemiss from 2021. We talked with Lucie about who the energy poor are in Leeds (and elsewhere), why they should be involved in finding the right answers, but also how she thinks research can help improve energy poverty policies in cities in the UK and Europe.