Average energy bills forecast to hit £3,615 this winter
Energy consultant Cornwall Insight said a regular gas and electricity bill reach £3,615 in the new year, which is hundreds of pounds more than previous predictions.
In May, the UK Government announced an energy costs support package – worth £400 per household – in response to predictions that bills would rise to £2,800 for the average household in October.
Two weeks ago the Welsh Government also announced that more than 400,000 low-income households in Wales will be eligible for a additional £200 payment to help keep their homes warm this autumn and winter.
Cornwall Insight predicted last month that annual energy bills would typically rise to £3,244 from October and £3,363 from January, but circumstances have changed significantly since then.
The company told BBC Breakfast that such a bill is now likely to rise to £3,358 from October and £3,615 from January.
Cornwall Insight’s principal consultant, Craig Lowrey, said surging gas prices and concerns about Russian supply had prompted the increase.
“However, while the rise in forecasts for October and January is a pressing concern, it is not only the level – but the duration – of the rises that makes these new forecasts so devastating,” he told the programme.
“Given the current level of the wholesale price, this level of household energy bills currently shows little sign of abating into 2024.”
‘Scratch the surface’
Dr Lowrey joined other experts in saying Government support will “only scratch the surface” for households.
“While the Government has pledged some support for October’s energy rise, our cap forecast has increased by over £500 since the funding was proposed, and the truth is the £400 pledged will only scratch the surface of this problem.”
On Friday, Richard Neudegg, director of regulation at Uswitch, called for the £400 to be increased to at least £600, and for payments to vulnerable households to rise from £650 to £950.
“The Government did the right thing by stepping in with wide-reaching support to try to help ease the blow. However, this support now looks like a severe under-estimation of what consumers need,” he said.
“Households need clarity to help them plan for the most expensive winter in living memory.”
Charity National Energy Action last month predicted that, should the average bill reach £3,250 per year, 8.2 million UK households will be in fuel poverty, or one in three.
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At the same time B.P. announced a record second quarter profit of 6.9 Billion pounds. Keep a war going, create global food insecurity and uncertainty, then the richest of the rich can rake in the cash, whilst we become more and more dependent on these faceless spivs. Is it just me, or has this perfect storm been orchestrated to enhance the global elites desire for another great reset?
Of course it has. I’m not a big adherent of “New World Order” theories, but we have moved at some speed towards a degree of collaboration between big business and big government which fails to exercise sufficient sanction to prevent exploitation and profiteering. There is still a lot of jockeying for position as evidenced by the proxy war in Ukraine which is the US & NATO’s way of putting Russia in its place. Internally within UK there is no doubt that wealth is being sucked out of the ordinary consumer and the public purse and hived off into private corporate… Read more »
The silence of the UK Tory Gov on this matter is deafening. They have enabled mostly globalist energy corporates to profiteer on an unprecedented level and any mitigation suggested are minor nibbles at the edge, crumbs off the fat cat’s tables. Sadly all Governments in UK are obsessed with a version of the green gospels whose orthodoxy allows the jacking up of fossil fuel prices as a “punishment” for ever using them ! Combining that “green orthodoxy” with their love for big business and you get a toxic result for consumers.
The Westminster system has failed Cymru and the whole of the UK. Decades of corruption, watered-down legislation, putting the interests of energy firms before the security of the people and the safety of the archipelago that it claims to have lawful dominion over has left us all vulnerable and in servitude to the energy corporations and has allowed dangerous gaps in our national defence. A country that has to rely on other countries for its energy needs and its basic foods, is an unsafe country, in pawn to larger players on the international scene. The Tories and New Labour Before… Read more »
Maybe the fact that at least 31 ‘Lords’ have profited by around £750 .000 this year, and how many MPs also? Has something to do with their reluctance to actually protect consumers?