THE Government needs to do more to make homes energy efficient in order to combat fuel poverty, a Bolton MP has said.

According to Government figures two and a half million households across the UK, including 14,800 in Bolton, cannot afford to heat their homes properly.

Sir David Crausby has been questioning Government Ministers in Parliament and has revealed that the number of households helped with insulation has fallen significantly in the last few years.

In 2012 635,000 households received cavity wall insulation through a national government scheme, but last year there were just 91,000.

Loft insulation has seen an even more dramatic fall; 1,284,000 households received this in 2012 and only 67,000 in 2016.

The Bolton North East MP said: “We need to fix the root causes of fuel poverty, people with low incomes tend to live in lower quality homes that are harder to heat.

“No one in Bolton or anywhere else deserves to live in a cold home that damages your health and forces you to choose between heating and eating.

“The Government keep interfering with schemes to provide free insulation, making them more restrictive, confusing and harder to access.

“We need to make this as easy as possible and improve as many homes as we can.”