Kevin Peachey
Cost of living, BBC News
Getty images
C charitable organizations and energy providers criticized the plans to modify how the costs standing on invoices are paid.
All households pay the fixed daily costs covering the connection costs to a gas and electricity supply.
Many invokers consider them unfair because they have no control over the billed quantity, which prompted the examination by the energy regulator ofgem.
But the regulator’s plans to offer a choice of prices that transfer these costs elsewhere on people’s bills have been described as complicated and displaced.
Billing plans
When ofgem asked the public’s opinion on permanent accusations, she received an unprecedented response from 30,000 submissions.
The majority was against permanent charges – fixed costs, generally totaling more than £ 300 per year, which are paid regardless of the amount of energy that households use.
Under the OFGEM price ceiling, permanent charges have increased by 43% since 2019.
The regulator said that these costs were still paid, but in December announced its intention to offer an uncompromising load solution.
Ofgem’s proposal is to force energy companies to make a double -price offer – with or without, a permanent burden. The price without standing costs would have a higher price for each energy unit. Both would be the existing price ceiling system.
Now, when he launches a one -month consultation on his proposals, he explained that the standing load option could work in:
Increase the price of each energy loading unit in the blocks – customers therefore pay a higher unit rate until a certain amount of energy is used, then a lower price in which customers pay a lower unit rate until a certain amount of energy is used and a higher price afterwards
The options would give customers “the choice and more control” on how they choose to pay their gas and their electricity, according to Charlotte Friel, of Ofgem.
“We are carefully examining how these prices will work in practice, but everyone will have to carefully consider which option best meets their needs,” she said.
“Vulnerable will not benefit”
But a series of charitable organizations and the energy suppliers’ commercial organization criticized the plans as not having responded to the basic cost of standing costs and by creating a much more complicated image for invoices.
The concerns about proposals include:
An inability to reduce standing costs to make them more affordable – the plans simply move them to another part of Billconcern that vulnerable customers will involuntarily make the wrong choice, which means that they will pay more for their gas and Electricity to the lottery element of the postal code of standing costs, where customers pay different standing costs depending on the place where they live in the complexity of compatriot to the billing system, when The price ceiling was supposed to act as a safety net to avoid customers who do not change the prices are torn off
“What the OFGEM offers is more to hide the permanent charges in unit rates, even allowing energy companies to bill the first energy units which are completely the opposite of what we really need “Said Jonathan Bean, from the Fuel Poverty Poverty Poverty Action campaign group.
Peter Smith, by Charity National Energy Action, said that the system would still be unfair and impact on the most vulnerable.
“We are particularly worried that pre-payment customers can be allowed to accumulate increasingly inaccessible costs, who will continue to have to be reimbursed in whole before being able to light the lights or run a hot bath for their children,” said -Ali said.
Betty says the standing load is too high
Facilings, charitable organizations and suppliers claim that proposals do not reach the high cost of energy.
Betty, seventy-six, who attends a knitting group in a community center in Islington, said: “It’s simply too much. You turn off your heating and you are cold but the standing is still there.
“When I had my bill recently, it was £ 300 and we are only two retirees. It’s too high. You worry about it. It is depressing.”
And the suppliers’ business body, Energy UK, should be the overall cost should be at the heart of the regulator’s objective.
Customers cost collectively 3.8 billion pounds sterling indebted to suppliers.
“Right now, we are in record levels of debts. We have enormous concerns about affordability and I do not think that the proposal for permanent charges and the new price ceiling are the means to respond to these major concerns “Said Dhara Vyas, Managing Director of Energy UK.
