The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has, through a new guidance aimed at cutting winter deaths, recommend that plumbers, boiler fitters and engineers should report to the council those homes which are too cold.
“Anyone who comes into contact with vulnerable groups should be able to refer people to the service, including health and social care staff, safety services staff and workers from charities and voluntary organisations”, said Professor Gillian Leng, Deputy Chief Executive of NICE. “Properly using this huge number of contact opportunities can make a big difference in preventing illness and saving lives.”
NICE says that winter mortality in the UK is pretty high as compared to other countries including Germany and Finland and as many as 24,000 excess deaths and many more people made ill because they live in a home that is too cold.
In its latest guidance, NICE has recommended training of “heating engineers, meter installers and those providing building insulation to help vulnerable people at home, and be able to spot if someone is at risk because of a cold home”.
NICE further says that local health and wellbeing boards should design, create and commission a single-point-of-contact system and health and housing referral service in such a way that they vulnerable people who live in cold homes.
Everybody pitches in
NICE recommends that professional who come in contact with people living in cold homes should flag such an instance. In case of plumber, engineers, boiler fitters and other such professionals, they should report the instance to councils, local wellbeing and health boards.
GPs who come in contact with patients known to be living in cold homes should kickstart a conversation about the impact of cold on their health, suggests NICE.
“This new NICE guideline says that health, social care and other professionals should always take a minute to consider the health risk of cold homes when in contact with patients and clients, and know what steps to take to get help to the people who need it”, says Dr David Sloan, Co-Chair of the NICE committee which developed the guidance.
“This conversation could happen, for example, when people come in for their flu jab. It’s about embedding this into the systems that already exist.”
Solutions to cold homes
There are a number of solutions that help in reducing the number of cold homes across the country – primary among them being heating improvement programmes including grants, free loft insulation, advice on managing energy effectively in the home and securing the most appropriate fuel tariff and billing system.