Energy crisis: How living in a cold home affects your health

And there’s the emotional toll all of this takes, too.

“We’ve got families actually turning their cookers off, their televisions, their heating. The only thing they’ve got on is a fridge,” says Billy McGranaghan, founder of Dad’s House, a charity supporting single fathers in the UK. He also runs two foodbanks, open to anyone, in London.

“It’s destroying a lot of families’ relationships,” he adds. Some households are “walking on eggshells” because there’s no money to pay for a child’s much-needed new shoes, for example. While tensions rise, parents watch the money in prepayment gas meters tick steadily downwards, knowing that the heating will soon run out again, McGranaghan says.

He can tell that the people he speaks to are embarrassed about this. That they feel anxious. He says it’s obvious from their tone of voice, their body language.

With the harshest months of winter still ahead, the outlook seems very bleak. But there are people, like McGranaghan, who are trying to help.

Back in Belfast, on a second visit to Foodstock, I meet Doherty outside a small church hall on a quiet residential street. The church leaders have loaned him the key and, when the metal shutter rolls up and he opens the door, we step inside to an incredible bounty of heat.

“It’s really warm in here,” I remark, genuinely startled at how toasty the room is. “Yeah, it’s a great system – that was the thinking behind using here, it’s great,” says Doherty, pacing across the floor enthusiastically. The heat radiates from below. It must be 23C (73F) at least, I estimate, loosening my scarf.

In just a few weeks, this will be the site of what Doherty describes as a warm community space. Every Monday, the venue will be open to locals, including those who aren’t able to heat their homes. A nearby supermarket has promised to donate buns and cakes. Doherty excitedly explores the kitchen to one side of the hall where people will be able to make coffee and tea. There’ll be arts and crafts and other activities so visitors will have lots of reasons to come and enjoy the warmth. He and his fellow volunteers are organising two additional warm spaces besides this one.

The prospect of so-called “warm banks” springing up in places across the UK this winter, including in public libraries, churches and galleries, has prompted disbelief from some members of the public. But Doherty says the need is real. Many of the people Foodstock supports live alone in cold houses, he explains. A warm, friendly space provides a sociable alternative. (People in the UK looking for warm places to use over the winter can now find examples of such sites near to them via a virtual map, set up by the Warm Welcome Initiative.)

Doherty has also spent the summer stockpiling donations of winter clothes – fleeces, thermal underwear, coats, scarves, gloves and more to be packed in tote bags and distributed to people in the community. This won’t be the first year Foodstock has distributed “warm packs” but demand could be particularly high this winter, Doherty says.

These are more or less emergency interventions. Perhaps the only things some people will have to prevent them from freezing at home. The British government has also offered financial assistance, to a point, with energy bills and organisations such as the Fuel Bank Foundation offer pre-paid top-up cards via local retailers for people who have run out of money for gas, for example. Matthew Cole, head of Fuel Bank Foundation, says he has already noticed soaring demand well before the arrival of winter.

Changing attitudes towards heating, in which it is increasingly viewed as a luxury, concern him, he adds: “This acceptance that it’s OK now to be without energy, that’s the norm – that worries me, actually, because it’s not normal.”