More than 10,000 households in Islington will continue to live in “cold and draughty” homes if more is not done to tackle fuel poverty, a tenants’ rights campaigner has said.

Conor O’Shea from campaign group Generation Rent warned that there are “huge health implications” if the status quo were to continue.

It comes as data shows that energy companies installed just 15 new retrofit 'measures' into Islington homes over 12 months as part of a flagship government fuel poverty scheme.

The ECO4 scheme obliges energy companies to install various energy efficient measures, including additional insulation and district heating connections, in households with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of D or lower.

Data from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has revealed that just 15 such measures were installed in Islington between March 2022 and March 2023.

Islington councillor Praful Nargund has slammed the figures as a “disgrace”, claiming: “Islington residents living in fuel poverty are being neglected by the Government at this critical time."

Generation Rent has warned that current renting conditions make it hard for tenants to take up the offer of the scheme.

Mr O’Shea said: “There’s basically no incentives for landlords to do it because they’re not living in the home, they don’t have to deal with the cold and they also don’t have to pay the bills – that’s on the tenant.

“So there’s no reason why a landlord would ever apply for this.”

He added that even if the tenant applied for the scheme, the landlord could take the money to retrofit and then “just turn around and say I’m evicting [them]” as they could now rent the home out at a higher price.

This, Mr O’Shea claimed, is why renters “have decided not to take up the grants in big numbers”.

Cllr Nargund wrote to Secretary of State Claire Coutinho in September to raise concerns about the “failure” of the scheme.

In a letter, her department said that it does not consider the scheme to be "failing”.

It pointed to the fact that national figures show that 171,800 measures were installed under the ECO4 scheme between April 2022 and June 2023.

The letter added that ECO4 delivery “continues to increase”, with 19,600 measures installed in June 2023 alone.