There’s a warning that “a tsunami of poverty” will hit rural communities if more help isn’t provided to the 14% of British households living without access to mains gas.

Many homes in the countryside which rely on oil, bottled gas, coal and wood to heat and cook are facing rapidly rising bills, made worse due to the volatility caused by the war in Ukraine.

Those alternative fuel sources are not covered by Ofgem’s increased price gap coming into force next month and are often far more expensive than mains supply.

SNP MP Drew Hendry has tabled the Energy Pricing (Off Gas Grid Households) Private Members Bill in parliament to try to provide extra help and protection for households which are off-grid.

He told the Commons last month that those households are forced to pay about four times more for their energy bills than the average home.

The problem mainly affects rural parts of the UK, where mains gas pipes do not reach.

In Cornwall, 47% of homes are off the gas grid.

Energy prices are soaring for millions of households across the country as Ofgem’s price cap rises to £1,971 on 1 April.

However, 1.5 million households that are served by heating oil will also find their bills increasing dramatically, according to Energy Helpline.

These homes, which are mostly situated in rural locations, are not covered by the price cap and so they are likely to find themselves affected by rising costs.

Heating oil prices are linked to oil prices more generally, and in recent weeks these have increased rapidly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions – Russia is the third biggest producer of oil in the world.

Rural homes are also facing long delays receiving deliveries of LPG (liquified petroleum gas) as the ongoing HGV driver shortage has left providers struggling to fulfil orders.

Plans for a coal mine in Cumbria have turned into a global political row. The plan for the first deep mine in the UK for decades in Whitehaven was approved by Cumbria County Council in October 2020.

However, after an outcry from environmental campaigners including Greenpeace and Greta Thunberg, the council suspended its decision.

Now the government, which had previously decided not to intervene in the project has done just that and said a public inquiry must be held.

To complicate matters further, the company behind the mine, West Cumbria Mining (WCM), announced it was taking legal action against the council claiming its U-turn could not be “justified”.

Conservative MP for Workington Mark Jenkinson said he believes a lot of people oppose the idea because they do not understand the mine would produce coal for steel-making, not for power stations.

Spending on trees and forestry fell by nearly £20m a year between 2015 and 2018, when a purely Conservative government had taken over from the coalition, despite pledges to plant more trees.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said £132m was spent across the UK on trees in 2017-18, down from £151m in 2014-15. The more recent total included £32m in England, with most of the rest spent in Scotland.

The figures equate to less than £1 per person in England and less than £2 per person across the UK, compared with annual spending of about £90 per person on roads, £150pp on fossil fuel subsidies and £135pp in foregone tax from the nine-year freeze on fuel duty.

Subsidising fossil fuel production overseas costs each UK taxpayer more than £7 a year, according to estimates from Friends of the Earth.

Trees became an unexpected electoral battleground over the weekend when the Tories pledged to plant 30m new trees a year and the Liberal Democrats promised 60m.

Emi Murphy, a trees campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “We’re calling for the next government to properly fund the doubling of tree cover.

“This is one of the key solutions to solving the climate crisis but has been shockingly underfunded for years. Faced with the climate emergency and the dire impacts it will bring, we simply cannot afford not to fund trees.”