Six Million Households to Get £150 Energy Rebate Letters
Letters confirming £150 off energy bills this winter begin arriving from today, going to around six million households across Britain. Every billpayer on a means-tested benefit now qualifies, after an expansion that added nearly 2.3 million families last year. Separately, the prime minister has ordered a review of gas standing charges.
The letters will go out between now and January, and anyone who needs to telephone their supplier about eligibility must do so before late February. The government says the scheme is funded through to 2030-31, and the minister for energy consumers, Polly Billington, urged people who think they qualify to “keep an eye out for a letter” — while warning recipients to contact suppliers only by their usual route and not to follow suspicious links, which is a sensible caution given what fraud figures published the same morning show. The standing-charges question is at an earlier stage than the headlines suggest. At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Andy Burnham said he had asked the chancellor and the energy secretary “to look at whether we can remove standing charges from gas bills and to report back to this house at the earliest opportunity”. No mechanism and no timetable have been given, the review covers gas only, and the regulator has consulted for nearly two years without reaching firm conclusions. The averages are about 55p a day for electricity and 30p for gas. Energy prices are forecast to rise 16% in January to a four-year high.