• AGREE or disagree with their tactics, but Insulate Britain has created an awareness of British leaky homes that should have been addressed by government for well over a decade.

EndFuelPoverty.org.uk state that more than 11,000 people die as a result of fuel poverty every year and as our summers are getting hotter and thousands of deaths are linked to overheating.

It is the poorest who live in fuel poverty, a state where a household cannot afford its energy bills in relation to its earnings and have to decide between keeping warm (or cool) and providing food on the table.

In Islington, with high levels of inequality, around 9,300 of all households live in fuel poverty.

While various initiatives have been carried out to support people to understand energy bills, how to become more efficient, the time is more than ripe to advance on a large-scale retrofitting scheme in the borough.

In June 2019 the borough declared a climate emergency and with 103,000 households of which about 25,000 are council- managed. There is no time to lose.

No time to lose for the households that are directly impacted by leaky, cold, and often mouldy conditions, and no time to lose with regard to reducing the carbon emissions from buildings, the single biggest source of emissions in the borough.

In its Net Zero Carbon Strategy – Vision 2030 Islington raises the importance of a government-led retrofit scheme that establishes the required policy and funding environment for large-scale retrofitting.

And there are things that can be done at local level.

• First is to raise awareness (at scale);

• Second is to identify alternative funding streams and reprioritise funds towards retrofitting;

• Third is to engage with the expertise and knowledge that is embedded it this amazing community;

• Fourth is to start training programmes so there will be expertise and skill to implement the retrofit schemes when solutions and funding have been identified;

• Fifth, to change the conservation rules to not only accept but encourage retrofit solutions and installation of renewable energy technologies; and

• Sixth, hold a citizens’ assembly on housing in a climate and ecological emergency.

It is time that we in Islington give retrofitting the attention and focus that it needs.

Residents, if you live in Islington-managed properties write to your councillors demanding this is put at the top of their agendas. If you are in a private property write to your MP to get them to lobby the government a bit more efficiently.

And if you own your own home join the “Households Declare” signatories at www.householdsdeclare.org. It is time we “Insulate Islington” for the benefit of all of us and the planet upon which we depend.

ISLINGTON ENVIRONMENTAL EMERGENCY ALLIANCE