Chancellor set to help poorest households on heating oil

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is preparing support package for the poorest households on heating oil – which could be announced as soon as tomorrow.

She told The Times yesterday that she had “found the money” for the package.

It comes as the Iran war has pushed up the price of crude oil, and caused heating oil costs in the UK to double.

While lots of the country is heated by gas, big swathes of rural areas are off-grid and rely on heating oil and liquefied petroleum gas to warm their homes.

In England, around 1.1 million fossil-fuel heated homes are not connected to the gas grid.

While in Northern Ireland, two-thirds of homes rely on heating oil.

And while the energy price cap regulates gas and electricity prices and won’t increase until July at the earliest – and is actually set to fall from the start of April – heating oil isn’t covered by the cap.