Price Cap - Just announced

[swifttwist]

From £1971 to £3549. 80% rise. I have no words.

New figures:

Electricity
£0.52 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.46

Gas:
£0.15 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.28

The price cap is quite complicated, even 3 or 4 years ago I was paying £5000 a year for gas and electricity (big house) and is now almost £700 a month (abot £8000 a year) and no doubt will be massive next year.

@CurtainSchmurtain

i can't see that happening, no. But the companies can install 'pay as you go' meters. No pay, no power. And they can set them up so people pay and a percentage comes off the debt and the rest is available power.

My sons school has just put in solar system which is big enough to cover their daytime usage. So relieved, in the nick of time! Schools have a lot of roof!

May I add that ‘businesses’ for the purpose of energy also include schools. There is no cap.

£150 pip payment (pip isnt means tested) , £400 off energy bills for everyone, £300 for pensioners in October, £600 for those on low income households . They do give a fuck and have pledged to pay more as soon as know what the increases will be. Martin Lewis and the msm are doing a Covid on us all over again.

forgive my ignorance but if you are then an OAP on low income you will get £1300 in help this winter ?
That does seem quite a lot of help, or is the £600 the max amount for say a large family ?
I' ve worked out on the new unit prices and standing charges and last yrs useage we will spend £438 per month, yet our supplier wants £680 per month in dd...we are already in credit quite substantially...
i have decide to cancel dd, do monthly metre readings and pay the bill outright each month.
fed up with my money sitting in their bank account.

It really does look like a tsunami of financial chaos is looming for millions, I dread to think how this will play out and what it will do to small businesses, the high street, mental health, kids nutrition and general well-being of the country.

The sheer lack of action from this government is criminal, they’re not even sleepwalking in to a disaster, they’re sprinting wide eyed towards it.

In the winter?

Fuck, this is scary. We are pretty comfortable i would say and live modest lives (no car, one forrin, one domestic holiday a year) 2 kids, live in a small terraced house.
Like everyone, we have had to tighten our belts hugely. Got rid of subscriptions, food shopping much more consciously, reduced power usage. So far we haven't had to go without, but from autumn something will have to give, either holidays or longer term saving. That is a crappy decision to have to make, but it makes me sick that some of my friends and neighbours will be choosing between heating and eating. This will break so many people and businesses.

My only hope is that it will be the shove needed to break our reliance on fossil fuels.

The conservatives always championed the small businesses and the owners used to support them to the hilt : makes me wonder how they will feel having to find all this extra money just for the fuel.

There were years to get this sorted. Years and years to have grants for insulation, for secondary or double glazing, for solar panels, etc. even to have hydrocarbon storage (some old spent hydrocarbon fields can sometimes be converted to store gas and condensate if it’s done before the reservoir pressures drop too low).
Governments knew the risk of relying on imports. Know
the risk of global warming, for that matter, and know there were solutions that are more affordable than the economic disaster that’s about to hit us.

They cannot possibly think price increases like this are manageable for anyone, either individual or business or institution.

Thank you @Hugasauras the figures were most helpful (not that I liked them but it’s another matter )
DH just calculated using our usage and it gave us monthly figure £450 . We were on above average household usage with high proportion of gas. And please please don’t advice me to put on extra fleece, switch off the lights and cut cooking. DD has additional needs which affect our bill.

I can’t understand the reasons for such a rise to be honest. Yes, there is war in Ukraine but as far as I know half of our gas is UK sourced and decent proportion of electricity comes from renewables. Have wind power and solar become more expensive? We are struggling, cutting showers and heating for children and pensioners and then energy companies are reporting enormous rise in profits. How is this fair and tbh how this is even possible?

@Antarcticant I'm sorry you're feeling pushed that far.

but what would be the point? You'd still have to pay the standing charge. It doesn't cost very much to run a fridge or use a lightbulb, and you can control how much electricity you use.

The trouble with pay as you go meters is that even when you're not paying, the standing charge still adds up every day. So when you finally get the money to top up your meter it can all be swallowed by the daily standing charge that's been adding up every day. It's unfair that even if you don't use any energy at all you are still racking up a debt. If I couldn't afford to run my car I could sorn it and go without, that's not possible with energy which is crazy to me.

BBC earlier this morning said that government officials refused to come onto the breakfast news programme
I don't know if anyone has spoken about it since though

Yes agree with this, the standing charge is probably a large component of most peoples.

I'm sure you would agree that these amounts are a: not enough and b; will need to be on going, possibly for many years, costing us 100s of billions.

I keep coming back to part nationalise UK energy production... it is the only way out of this and its what we would do if we were at war.

..and to all intents and purposes, economically, thats what we now are with Russia.

I hadn't gone that far, despite being inclined to believe the worst of any Tory government, but I think it might be harder to sell really big houses now because of the running costs.

Of course they did - they're all bloody cowards!

as I’ve said before, we should all be able to heat our homes and cook our food on the burning hot shame that this Tory government should be feeling right now.

Please could everyone consider emailing your local MP to tell them what you are posting here? They need to put pressure on for a solution to this, whatever party they are from.
www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/

It’s appalling that MPs are still being kept out of Parliament and away on holiday. This Tory government (who are the only ones who have the power to do so) need to recall Parliament immediately to tackle it.

www.parliament.uk/about/how/occasions/recallparliament/

Which is what corbyn wanted to do.

Agreed. There are loads of ways to slice the unfairness though - especially if they're talking about "borrowing" £100bil from taxpayers and handing it to the energy company.

Not to single pp out but for example purposes, 3 person household 3300kw elec and 16000kw gas, right?

For comparison we're also a 3 person household, wfh, and our usage is 2800kw elec and 1900kw gas.

Just examples, you could compare any two households, but do we get the same help when one is making a pretty conscious effort to use the bare minimum while the other isn't?

If they do inject this money, surely they should be using it to buy actual shares in the gas and elec PRODUCERS (i.e part of full nationalisation) and not just handing us back OUR OWN TAX MONEY so we can pay it straight into the profit margins of the suppliers?

'as I’ve said before, we should all be able to heat our homes and cook our food on the burning hot shame that this Tory government should be feeling right now.'

It is a global problem, the situation would be exactly the same if Labour were in!

Yes they need to announce further support but they have said this will happen.

This winter is going to be bad enough for so many people but the fact that it’s going to be worse next year is indeed sickening. The government has no choice but to increase the help it’s providing! I don’t even want to think about what small businesses are going to do!

@Arenanewbie UK energy is produced by private companies, who "sell" it on the global commodity market, UK suppliers, like EON etc buy it and then sell it to us.

Well yes but doesn’t really help anyone though. Just means they won’t disconnect you. The bills will still need to be paid if you want any kind of credit rating.