News: Energy bills to rise by £700/yr for many | Chancellor unveils up to £350 households support

al4x

I'm really glad I went against advice in October and grabbed the Scottish Power 3 year fix at 1577 a year. 

Despite advice saying I was crazy to take something so much over the the cap. 

However working from home full time and personally I didn't see why the price of gas should reduce I opted for a 3 year fix. 

Hearing the horrible news about further increases this coming winter I'm 100 percent sure I went with the right call.

I miss out on the 150 for CT bands. But feel this is fair. But the 200 loan from the government is a con. And basically means nothing. What will I do with that? Use it to pay off the debt it creates. Ridiculous. It's a headline grab. 


Blame for this needs to be put on past governments for not diversifying our energy market. We knew we were reliant on our best friends Russia and still didn't do anything. We should have been building nuclear between fossil and renewable. 

But democracys flaw (as it will be in the case of the environment) spend now for something 10 years later isn't a vote winner. 

Astria

wrf12345 said:

£40 a year for five years, not sure what happens if u r a "new" customer next year and have not had the £200

I suspect they won't be keeping track of everyone they have given £200 to, so will simply charge everyone £40/year regardless of whether you actually got the £200 or not. It's a simple way of getting some more cash in for everyone other than consumers.

Cynic1965

MattMattMattUK said:

DebbyInDebt said:

What happens if you are in a joint household with a partner when you get the £200 loan, if you were to seperate and live in two separate households they would both get this loan repayment added to their bill and end up paying double the amount back than they collectively borrowed?

It is not a loan in the normal sense. However, every residence account open in October will receive it and every residential account open at the relevant point in the next five years will pay the surcharge.

Overall almost everyone will lose out because of this, some of us will however lose out more than others.

So who exactly trousers all these extra 40/yr for those bill payers who didn’t actually benefit (lol!!!) from the original 200 bung? 

Sea_Shell

Cynic1965 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

DebbyInDebt said:

What happens if you are in a joint household with a partner when you get the £200 loan, if you were to seperate and live in two separate households they would both get this loan repayment added to their bill and end up paying double the amount back than they collectively borrowed?

It is not a loan in the normal sense. However, every residence account open in October will receive it and every residential account open at the relevant point in the next five years will pay the surcharge.

Overall almost everyone will lose out because of this, some of us will however lose out more than others.

So who exactly trousers all these extra 40/yr for those bill payers who didn’t actually benefit (lol!!!) from the original 200 bung? 

It'll be offset by those who die and so never pay it back!! 😉


However, if the net result over 5 years is an increase in the number of household accounts (new builds), then they will recoup more than they pay out!!

MattMattMattUK

wittynamegoeshere said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Petriix said:

MattMattMattUK said:

cooners said:

What I don't get is why Ofgem allowed it to rise so much in the first place. 
The whole point is to protect us from this sort of thing but once again Tory greed wins out over the cost of living.

Energy is already being sold at below cost, it is nothing to do with a Tory government but caused by global supply factors. The Ofgen price cap was not designed to give us cheap energy, it was designed to stop energy providers charging high margins, the current cap forces them to sell at a loss, which is why it needs to rise. Greed has nothing to do with it, although Putin's weaponization of energy is at least part to blame. 

It's everything to do with the tory ideological assault on government ownership. They gave away the energy infrastructure for peanuts and now billions are extracted in dividends, mostly from the wholesale side of the industry. 

The average margin on electricity supplies has been around 2.5% over the last decade. That means if no profits were made your bill would have only been at most 2.5% cheaper. 

Most of the money is made by the companies that prospect for and extract the energy, the dirty end. Most of that has been private for decades, much of it was always private, the government has made a lot of money from them in taxes, a large chunk of the shares are owned by pension funds which pay back as pensions. Yes I would have done things differently, but it is not the disaster that you and your ilk like to try and make out.

Someone actually believes that they made 2.5%?!?

Yes, that was the net margin, it is not a complicated concept.

wittynamegoeshere said:

This doesn't include salaries, pensions, bonuses, consultancy, etc etc.

Those are costs of business, you can't just choose not to pay all the staff, or refuse them pensions, every business or even government department, has wages and associated costs of employment, again this is not a complicated concept as presumably your employer remunerates you if you work?

wittynamegoeshere said:

What is the "ilk" that you disparigingly refer to?  Speaking only for myself, my "ilk" happens to be someone who believes in free and fair competition, mainly Tory voting and it's blindingly clear to me that the fake energy market is nothing of the sort.

Your ilk are those who come love to make ill informed, or often inaccurate statements, ignoring facts, the reality of running a business etc. I also believe in free markets (with some limits) and competition, it is what give me my income, but the energy market is not a free market because of the price cap. 

wittynamegoeshere said:
If we're going to have massive levels of government subsidy and control then at least do it properly and have it run by the state

We should not be subsidising the energy market at all, it causes huge distortions and damages long term investment. We need to price in the cost of carbon and have reasonable and fair regulation. The government should also be funding large scale nuclear, solar PV and wind installations, they should be doing this on a commercial basis (eg. government funds them upfront, but sells the energy at market rates so there is a return for the taxpayer).

wittynamegoeshere said:
not the corrupt money-siphoning cronyism that we have at the moment.

The system we currently have is not corrupt, "money-siphoning" or cronyism, it is a hugely distorted market due to inefficient and irrational government interventions. 

MattMattMattUK

Cynic1965 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

DebbyInDebt said:

What happens if you are in a joint household with a partner when you get the £200 loan, if you were to seperate and live in two separate households they would both get this loan repayment added to their bill and end up paying double the amount back than they collectively borrowed?

It is not a loan in the normal sense. However, every residence account open in October will receive it and every residential account open at the relevant point in the next five years will pay the surcharge.

Overall almost everyone will lose out because of this, some of us will however lose out more than others.

So who exactly trousers all these extra 40/yr for those bill payers who didn’t actually benefit (lol!!!) from the original 200 bung? 

The money paid into the accounts is loaned to the energy providers by the government, the payments go back to the government. The reality is this is a bum deal for everyone, but especially net taxpayers who will in reality shoulder the cost of this, just as they shoulder the cost of everything. 

Stevebrass

As others have noted, the capped standing charge for electricity in my region is increasing from £103.31 to £167.30. Why?

QrizB

Stevebrass said:

As others have noted, the capped standing charge for electricity in my region is increasing from £103.31 to £167.30. Why?

The short answer is "because it is".

The long answer is that if you read and understand all the info on this Ofgem page, including the attached spreadsheets that give full details of how the cap is calculated, it will explain it.

Kosmar04

I don't want his unsolicited loan, thanks very much.  MSE has been advising how to avoid this kind of this kind of thing for donkeys years...  consequently, I don't need it, either!  The money should go to people in need only.  

I don't want to effectively give myself a 5-year loan - especially without seeing the small print of a contract.

I want to know how I can opt out!

GingerTim

Kosmar04 said:

I don't want his unsolicited loan, thanks very much.  MSE has been advising how to avoid this kind of this kind of thing for donkeys years...  consequently, I don't need it, either!  The money should go to people in need only.  

I don't want to effectively give myself a 5-year loan - especially without seeing the small print of a contract.

I want to know how I can opt out!

You can't.