Approximately 12,000 households within the Advertiser circulation area are missing out on thousands of pounds of government grants to help with fuel bills and insulation – last winter 2,200 older people across the south west died as a direct result of the cold.

The Warm Front programme awards up to £2,500 to those receiving certain benefits, including the elderly, pregnant women and the disabled, with the aim of keeping their homes warm.

However, only 768 of the eligible 12,077 households within our area have applied.

Teignbridge MP Richard Younger-Ross is backing calls for the programme to be improved.

'We ought to be providing a straight payment to households rather than relying on people to claim. However, that is not the system we have at present,' he said.

Nina Parnell, of Care Direct, the team which advises Devon's over 60s of their benefit entitlements, said: 'We actively promote the Warm Front benefits and all of our callers are offered a benefits health check to ensure that they are receiving everything they are entitled to.

'I honestly don't know why people aren't taking up the payments.'

The statistics emerged as a campaign to highlight the national shame of the deaths of older people from the cold was launched by Help the Aged.

The UK now has the highest proportion of 'excess' winter deaths within the European Union.

The charity's head of public affairs Mervyn Kohler said: 'It is time this country was named and shamed into doing something about this national scandal.

'Why has there been no outcry about these latest figures like that witnessed in France when some 15,000 older people died in this summer's heatwave?'

The charity claims that two-thirds of MPs believe the Warm Front programme is now in need of reform and the underlying reason for the deaths is, they say, fuel poverty, which is defined as when more than 10 per cent of income has to be spent on maintaining a warm home.

They also claim that 22 per cent of older people living in poverty are forced to choose between heating and eating.

The campaign is calling on the government to adopt the Scottish model and commit to adequate insulation and heating in the homes of older people regardless of income.

l Warm Front information is available on 0800 316 6015.