the elephant in the room?

Mstty

Quite rightly all the bosses of energy suppliers are trying to protect themselves from people not being able to pay their energy bill.

This is why they want a large pot of Government backed money to be able to pull down from. It's to protect themselves in the first instance.

They are not interested in everyone's welfare they are just trying to look after themselves and sod the economy.

It may well benefit greedy people who want the government to subsidise their energy but any subsidisation should be on need basis.

The rubbish you read even here of people saying they won't turn their heating on this winter. Yes the price has more than doubled for gas but surely they had budgeted for some heating this year just work within that budget not go cold turkey. 

It will be a tough hard winter, winter is coming and maybe we all have to dress up as if we were sent to the wall(sorry for all those non game of thrones watchers)

brewerdave

You can always live like Wim Hof (who posts on here as @Herts Lad   !!

savers_united

MattMattMattUK said:

wrf12345 said:

Ovo on the radio now, suggesting two tier so plus zero s/c that would be brill for low users. Turned the gas off since March, have not decided if I will turn it back on in Nov yet even though I am fixed with BG until March so not as bad as many. At least the focus is now on helping the lower end of the market rather than continually treating them with contempt. They do need to put an intelligent politician in charge of it and get rid of Ofgem, Michael Gove??

The standing charge is not "treating them with contempt", it is fair that everyone pays towards the cost of the grid that they are connected to. Also the lowest users are generally those with modern well insulated homes and solar panels, the next lowest group are generally professionals who work in an office. The highest use groups are the disabled and pensioners, followed by families of diminishing size, with the few exceptions for those with absolutely huge homes, swimming pools etc. who are now installing a lot of solar power and heat pumps so will soon be in the low user category. 

So we are back to the same position, you want your energy provision to be subsidised, you want average and high users to subsidise you. 

Yes I agree, The standing charge is a non issue for the majority and especially now with such high unit rates the SC is even less in the grand scheme of things. There is only a small percentage of low users who would like to see it scrapped and its clear that OVO along with other providers are just looking after themselves and knowing that working people are unlikely to default for fear of having a marker on their credit file it will be those who are normally in debt and have poor credit ratings that will be first and they are protecting themselves from these defaults. 
The low / high user = low / high earner is not as easy as that,those with money have taken steps with solar panels, new heating systems, energy efficency measures or have a fairly new property with good levels of insulation, so if not now will over time take steps to reduce their usage where they can see a return on their investments. 

It is quite often those in social housing, low income who have houses in poor states of repair, draughty windows, poor ventilation, no gardens so dry clothes inside etc etc. This group have little option but to use alot of energy as paying extra per week is still cheaper then having a couple of windows repaired / replaced, they also tend to spend more time at home, especially those not working, so games consoles and TV will be heavily used. 

You then have young professionals in nice apartment blocks, earning good money, out alot with work and socialising who will be low users. 

Your average family, living in average sized properties and earning average wages who will get hit the hardest as they tend to not get support with anything, they don't have deep pots of money to make big changes to their property to improve things, have quite alot of outgoings, these can be a mix.of above / below average use but are in no way well off, but likely getting by and drawing up plans on where they can cut back on spending not energy use as they only use what they need as a family with working parents, so will maybe drop to one car, have less takeaways to help pay towards their energy bills. 

ariarnia

Mstty said:

The rubbish you read even here of people saying they won't turn their heating on this winter. Yes the price has more than doubled for gas but surely they had budgeted for some heating this year just work within that budget not go cold turkey. 

we used to average about £30 a month over the year (on our old fix) for gas AND electric. on svr from octoer that same usage would being going up to around £150 a month. the standing charge will be going from about a third (£8 for 30 days) in March 2022 to nearly all (£28 for 30 days) from October 2022 of what we would have budgeted on our old fix. the remaining £2 could go on electric or heating but not both. so if we didn't have the ability to increase our budget to match the increase then I can easily see we might decide to go for no heating.  

but it's about more than the gas price. everything has gone up and for some being able to buy food and get work to earn the money to pay the bills has to come before heating. that means what was set aside for heating has to be cut more than everything else. for some that might mean cutting to 0.