{"id":63248,"date":"2026-10-22T06:01:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T06:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/elderly-devon-woman-too-scared-to-turn-heating-on-as-costs-soar\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T06:01:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T06:01:30","slug":"elderly-devon-woman-too-scared-to-turn-heating-on-as-costs-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/elderly-devon-woman-too-scared-to-turn-heating-on-as-costs-soar\/","title":{"rendered":"Elderly Devon woman too scared to turn heating on as costs soar"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Garner-Gatley said she had started going to bed earlier to keep warm while watching television and had recently begun using a hot water bottle and bed socks as evening temperatures dropped.<\/p>\n

She said instead of keeping hot water on a timer, she only switched it on when she needed it for washing, cooking or bathing before turning it off again.<\/p>\n

She added that people living in rural areas who depended on oil had “no choice” but to buy it. <\/p>\n

She said: “After working all my life I didn’t expect to be constantly worrying about how to keep warm at my age. It is really quite frightening.”<\/p>\n

Heating fuel costs have risen by up to 82% since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, according to Minster for Energy Consumers Polly Billington.<\/p>\n

Earlier in October, the government promised better regulation of the sector<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ministers said they would tighten up rules, promote competition and give customers clearer compensation routes if things went wrong. <\/p>\n

Minimum order levels set for some customers would also be reviewed, they added.<\/p>\n

Cornwall Council and Devon County Council have money available for households struggling with increasing heating oil costs from their crisis resilience funds, which are provided by the government.<\/p>\n

Cornwall Council said it had issued payments of \u00a3300 to \u00a31,386 households, a total spend of \u00a3415,800, which would double after a decision was made to award a further \u00a3300 to the same households.<\/p>\n

The Devon fund, worth about \u00a38.4m a year, is available through district councils, and is targeted at low\u2011income households facing an “essential cost they cannot afford”.<\/p>\n

Plymouth City Council and Torbay Council also have their own crisis resilience funds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Garner-Gatley said she had started going to bed earlier to keep warm while watching television and had recently begun using a hot water bottle and bed socks as evening temperatures dropped. She said instead of keeping hot water on a timer, she only switched it on when she needed it for washing, cooking or bathing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[919,8092,4990,4534,2076,226,2926,983],"class_list":["post-63248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-costs","tag-devon","tag-elderly","tag-heating","tag-scared","tag-soar","tag-turn","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63250,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63248\/revisions\/63250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}