Were bills graded in the 1950s?

hgc75

I remember in the 1950s my dad ranting about our household energy usage and how he blamed the plentiful numbers of lights bulbs available since the war.

The first so many units cost x amount.
The next so many units cost slightly less.
The final amount of units cost the least. 
My dad called that the millionaires rate and he would rant about how we could leave everything on now as we were on the millionaire's cheap rate.

Have I got this wrong??

If I have got this right then I think we should go back to graded bills BUT have the cheapest first and then get more expensive as people use more. This could help those on a very tight budget. This could also  help the environment as well as it would really pay people to cut down on their usage and avoid the millionaires rate.

Is my memory playing tricks on me?

pochase

What about people who need to heat their home very well due to illness or old age? 

hgc75

I am in that group myself. Most people who are facing horrific bills later this year are not in any "special" group and not all people who are old or suffer from an illness that means a higher level of heating is needed are on low incomes.

I am old but I think people with children and babies need heating and if they have to choose it is almost always the young mums who go without food.

JezR

There were various tariff arrangements in different regional boards in the 1950s. Some had the standing charge related to the rateable value, and LEB related it to the floor area. Where they had more expensive initial units the number of these was not always uniform, related to the number of rooms in the property.

As many electricity providers before nationalisation were operated by local authorities these are not so odd.

matelodave

hgc75 said:

I remember in the 1950s my dad ranting about our household energy usage and how he blamed the plentiful numbers of lights bulbs available since the war.

The first so many units cost x amount.
The next so many units cost slightly less.
The final amount of units cost the least. 
My dad called that the millionaires rate and he would rant about how we could leave everything on now as we were on the millionaire's cheap rate.

Have I got this wrong??

If I have got this right then I think we should go back to graded bills BUT have the cheapest first and then get more expensive as people use more. This could help those on a very tight budget. This could also  help the environment as well as it would really pay people to cut down on their usage and avoid the millionaires rate.

Is my memory playing tricks on me?

The multi tier system was to ensure that those who hardly used any still paid their fair share of the standing charge and generally was the either the first couple of hundred or so units a quarter at the higher charge and then most stuff after that at a lower charge.  Some companies did it on a daily basis but the principle was the same. However that got knocked on the head by Ofgem a few years ago because people found it too confusing and couldn't understand why.


Whether you agree with a standing charge or not you'd have to agree that it costs pretty much the same to provide, maintain, repai and bill  for the infrastructure to supply leccy or gas to your house whether you use a little or a lot.

Pyou'd would prefer a sliding charge based on the distance between your house and the power station  so that those that lived closer paid less than those who lived out in the country. You could even argue that those who live in a town should pay more because the road have to be dug up rather than in the country where the cabling is strung on poles and therefore cheaper to install and maintain.

about a graded response time for repairs depending on how much you were prepared to pay or even an upfront cost to be paid in the case of an outage.

It really isn't any different to the standing charge for your phone or water or even the fixed cost of running a car - tax and insurance and even maintenance has to be paid whether you use it a little or a lot.

I'm sure that if you could come up with a scheme that was equitable and fair to everybody, then we'd all be keen to hear it.

Don't forget that to give stuff away to those on "tight budgets" means that others have to pay out of their hard earned tight budgets.

Mstty

There is no easy solution to this and everyone is feeling the pinch. Some are feeling a punch.

For some it will be like going back to the 1950's cold houses, not a great deal of food on the table and very little to look forward to.

We have had a long hard look at our finances and what is important to us over the next 5 years. We are reducing our energy consumption considerably, we have cancelled all TV subscriptions and gone back to Freeview and free TV and movie channels on Roku and the Samsung TV we have. Locked in a cheap fibre broadband provider for the next 2 years at £18 a month and we meal plan for food shops. Downloaded a fuel app for the cheapest prices locally and when we do go on a journey we make sure we max it out doing what we need to do in the one journey.

All the above so we can hopefully put some money away for raining days like these and maybe squeeze in a holiday but at the moment that's not essential just a wish if something else doesn't crop up.

Uxb1

hgc75 said:

I remember in the 1950s my dad ranting about our household energy usage and how he blamed the plentiful numbers of lights bulbs available since the war.

The first so many units cost x amount.
The next so many units cost slightly less.
The final amount of units cost the least. 
My dad called that the millionaires rate and he would rant about how we could leave everything on now as we were on the millionaire's cheap rate.

Have I got this wrong??

If I have got this right then I think we should go back to graded bills BUT have the cheapest first and then get more expensive as people use more. This could help those on a very tight budget. This could also  help the environment as well as it would really pay people to cut down on their usage and avoid the millionaires rate.

Is my memory playing tricks on me?

Nope - you are spot on
The earliest bill I have is from the late 1960's
There were indeed three tiers of tariff - with as you say it getting cheaper as you used more per quarter
On this bill I have there was no standing charge - so the most expensive lower rate was basically being used as what we now call the standing charge.
I've got figures of 7.50p per unit first tier, 2.40 pence second tier and 1.90 pence 3rd tier this is from August 1970.
Note very carefully that these are OLD PENCES (d's) of course from the pre-decimal days of £-s-d so a usage of 510 units at the tier 3 rate of 1.90 per per unit would give a tier 3 component to the bill of £4 - 0 shillings and 9 pence
On a later bill there is an item called "meter rent" chargeable for the quarter which I suppose is the forerunner of the modern concept of the standing daily charge.

I'm told also but have no details that for phone bills the line rental fell into two categories less than XX miles from the exchange and more than XX miles - with the less than paying a reduced line rental as there was less of a line to go wrong en-route!

Edit
There are various peak time penal rates used round the world.  Some countries have a trip switch if you use too much at any one time the trip goes off. Norway is introducing a peak system such that if you use more than a certain amount over some period the WHOLE of the rest of the charging period is charged at a higher penal rate.  Industrial users have had this sort of thing for a while - my employer was a large user and we had our own generating plant for when were were approaching the Megawatts load limit!.

Chrysalis

We are kind of going back to this system by stealth.

Huge jumps in SC.
The new WHD will only help "high energy users, more specifically those in larger homes (as they using a model to predict energy usage instead of actual bills)".  Its 4 CEOs of energy companies fighting the case for singletons living in flats who they state are struggling the most.  Charities silent.
The EV tariffs.

hgc75

Thank you for all the comments especially Uxb1 who actually has a bill!
I liked that phrase from Mstty that we are all feeling the pinch but for some it is more of a punch. Very true.
The French seem to be helping everybody and there is a lot of talk about the amount of profit some of these energy companies are making.
I was brought up in a household where, if you did not have the money you did not have until you had saved for it. I have never paid interest on anything except for the mortgage with a Building Society run on Christian lines. Now I am being forced to have a loan by a Chancellor of the Exchequer who is not of my culture.
That is why I think everybody should get help with the cost of fuel and not be forced to borrow money.

MattMattMattUK

hgc75 said:

Thank you for all the comments especially Uxb1 who actually has a bill!
I liked that phrase from Mstty that we are all feeling the pinch but for some it is more of a punch. Very true.

Some people are always better able to deal with turbulence than others. For most households the increase in energy costs just means less discretionary spending, but for some it means not being able to afford to put the heating on, for the former it is an annoyance, for the latter it has health implications.

hgc75 said:

The French seem to be helping everybody and there is a lot of talk about the amount of profit some of these energy companies are making.

The French have the first advantage that 75-80% of their electricity is generated from nuclear power, with some of the remainder from renewables which goes a significant way to insulate them. The second sort of advantage is that it is an election year, so the government has chosen to keep energy costs down by direct subsidy to the energy industry. That means that taxpayers are ultimately paying so some people are being bribed with their own money, others are being bribed with someone else's money.

hgc75 said:

I was brought up in a household where, if you did not have the money you did not have until you had saved for it. I have never paid interest on anything except for the mortgage with a Building Society run on Christian lines.

Many of us operate with zero debt apart from our mortgages, many others buy almost everything on credit and run up huge debts on non-essentials, generally both groups do not understand the mentality of the other.

hgc75 said:

Now I am being forced to have a loan by a Chancellor of the Exchequer who is not of my culture.

I don't think Sunak's ethnic origins have anything to do with this. It is also not really a loan, certainly not in any legal or rational sense.

hgc75 said:

That is why I think everybody should get help with the cost of fuel and not be forced to borrow money.

Being "forced" to borrow money is one thing, but equally government forcing one group to subsidise the energy usage of others is also an issue. The only way for the government to give people "help" is to either raise taxes, which means one group of people paying more so others can receive that funding, or borrowing, which means passing on current spending to future generations, when our children are already saddled with a huge national debt and a cost of servicing that debt that exceeds what we spend on defence, education, policing etc. (I admit I an ignoring the possibility of printing money to pay energy bills, but that would be an insane course of action).