Fuel prices mean that Rachel only uses her cooker on special occasions and she and her partner eat salad most nights. Rachel uses the boiler as rarely as she can. She says, “It’s connected to the hot water, and obviously we can’t afford a new boiler, so we basically have to put it on when we need a shower, and then it has to go off. If we kept it on to stay warm, the £10 we put in the meter would only last us a day-and-a-half.” She’s off work with depression, but her Employment and Support Allowance was recently stopped and she is in an appeals process.