FINDS and SENSE launch a new data collaboration with the potential to transform our understanding of fuel poverty

Around nine million people in the UK are estimated to be living in fuel poverty, according to the Government’s Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics for 2025. But growing evidence suggests this figure significantly underestimates the true scale of the problem. Rising energy costs, persistent financial insecurity and poor housing conditions continue to affect millions of households, with serious consequences for health and wellbeing.

Understanding fuel poverty is the first step to tackling it. That’s why Smart Data Research UK (SDR UK) data services the Smart Energy Data Service (SENSE), and Financial Data Service (FINDS), have launched a new collaborative project that brings together smart energy data and smart financial data for the first time. By combining these rich, anonymised datasets, the project aims to deliver a more accurate, granular picture of fuel poverty at a local level and unlock new insights to inform policy and interventions.

The project, ‘Understanding energy demand in areas of economic vulnerability’, is led by Energy Systems Catapult and funded by SDR UK. It represents a powerful partnership between SENSE, which provides access to smart meter and energy consumption data, and FINDS which holds anonymised financial data from more than five million customers.

Dougie Robb, CEO of Smart Data Foundry and Director of FINDS, said:

“Making anonymised private sector data more accessible and combining it with other rich data sources, such as smart meter data, creates enormous opportunities to better understand and tackle fuel poverty.

By comparing financial indicators from current account data with energy usage patterns, we can explore issues such as poverty premiums associated with energy costs and the financial pressures that lead households into fuel poverty, at a much more granular level.”

At the heart of the project is a commitment to improving how fuel poverty is measured. Existing definitions in England and Wales, such as the Low Income High Costs (LIHC) and Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) indicators, are widely recognised as incomplete.

Torran Semple, collaborating researcher from the University of Oxford, explained:

“These indicators are known to significantly underestimate the true rate of fuel poverty. This presents a major policy challenge: if fuel poverty is not measured accurately, it cannot be meaningfully alleviated or eradicated.”

By integrating smart meter data from the Smart DCC (Data Communications Company) system data with financial records and aggregated local consumption data, the project will create new datasets capable of identifying real-world indicators of fuel poverty at Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) level. This approach offers fresh insights into how fuel poverty affects people’s daily lives and how financial stress and energy demand interact.

Dr Richard Snape, Technical Lead for the project, said:

“Bringing smart meter data together with financial data and local energy consumption is a powerful way to understand how fuel poverty impacts households. Our goal is to create a dataset that enables deeper research and delivers real social value from the data collected.”

As the UK continues its transition to Net Zero, the project places lived experience at the centre of energy system innovation. Too often, innovation focuses on new technologies or large-scale infrastructure, overlooking the realities faced by those struggling most to heat their homes or afford energy efficiency improvements.

By enabling researchers, policymakers, NGOs and data services to work together, this collaboration aims to provide a stronger evidence base to support more inclusive, effective responses to fuel poverty across the UK.

For more information about this project, please contact sense@es.catapult.org.uk