Louise Kelly has been forced to heat her council house using coal as the cost of electricity is so high in Braemar.
Now she is fighting to keep her fireplace after her local authority announced plans to bring in expensive new storage heaters.
Louise, 51, an assistant restaurant manager, has also battled energy supplier SSE to get her bill reduced.
At one stage she was paying £170 a month to heat her one- bedroom home, where she lives alone. After months of wrangling that was cut to £130.
She said: “It’s not fair we should pay so much for our electricity compared to London.”
Aberdeenshire Council is due to remove her fireplace tomorrow but Louise and other tenants have refused to cooperate. She said: “Last winter it dropped to -24C in Braemar. At that temperature a storage heater isn’t enough to keep your house warm. I have to supplement my heating with the fire or I would just freeze.”
Braemar councillor Geva Blackett has backed Louise’s bid to keep her fireplace and said: “I am desperately worried that some of my constituents will be plunged unnecessarily into fuel poverty this winter.”
This comes as families in Scotland are to be hit with crippling energy price hikes of up to £1560 this year – outstripping rises in England.
There are fears thousands of low-income households could be left to choose between “eating or heating” when rocketing bills kick in.
A Sunday Mail investigation found that a family of four living in a three-bedroom house could hope to pay £100 a month for electricity and gas. Their average annual bill of about £1200 is likely to increase to approximately £2400 this year.
However, in Braemar, Aberdeenshire – which has a reputation as the coldest town in the UK – the same family living in a similar property are likely to currently pay £130 a month – about 33 per cent more. And their annual bill is likely to increase from £1560 to a staggering £3120 this year.
Neil Cowan, policy and campaigns manager at the Scottish Poverty Alliance, said: “More and more people face the prospect of being forced into impossible decisions like whether to heat their home, pay their rent or put food on the table.”
One reason prices are going to go up is that in April Ofgem will lift its price cap. About 15million households saw their energy bills increase by 12 per cent when it was last updated in October.
Stephen Fitzpatrick, founder of the Ovo energy company, warned: “It looks almost certain bills are going to reach £2000 per household – that’s double what they were paying last year.”
Researchers have found properties in the north of Scotland are more reliant on electricity and oil, and also are more likely to have poor insulation, leading to bills being far higher. Scottish Lib Dem spokeswoman for Net Zero, Sanne Dijkstra-Downie, said: “Nobody should have to choose between heating and eating.
“We have called for the doubling of the Warm Home Discount and its extension to many more people on lower income.”
The Scottish Greens’ energy spokesman Mark Ruskell said: “Extra support from government is only the first step in tackling fuel poverty. It must be followed up by investing in low carbon and more sustainable solutions, as we are doing in Scotland with a massive investment in low-carbon buildings thanks to Greens in government.”
The Scottish Government revealed it has written to the UK Government demanding urgent action.
In a letter to Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, Scottish Energy Secretary Michael Matheson and Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison call for a reduction in VAT, targeted support for those on low incomes and four-nations talks on bill increases.
They wrote: “Since meaningful collaboration between the UK Government and the devolved nations will be a vital component of any effective response to this situation, we would welcome an assurance that this is already part of your thinking and would like to meet as early as possible.”
