Fuel costs: £100 home heating oil support scheme opens

Applications for a Stormont scheme to give eligible households a £100 voucher towards home heating oil costs are now open.

About 340,000 lower-income households are expected to qualify for the payment which was first announced in March.

Applications will made via the NIdirect government website from Wednesday 9 September.

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons said the process was “easy and fast”.

“The digital prepaid card will go some way to meeting the challenge of rising fuel costs and will benefit those who need it most as we head into the colder months.”

About two thirds of Northern Ireland households use home heating oil, by far the highest proportion of any UK region.

Unlike gas or electricity, the heating oil market is unregulated, meaning increases in wholesale costs are rapidly passed through to consumers.

At the start of the Iran conflict, that saw prices almost double in a matter of days.

Prices have since fallen back from their peak but are still around 50% higher than before the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

Lyons said: “I realise this one-off support will not by itself remedy the issue of long term fuel poverty, however I hope that it will go some way to easing the burden on hard-pressed households across Northern Ireland.”