Rising prices hit poorest hardest!

A gas and electricity company is to buck the trend of rising energy prices
by offering cheaper bills to its poorest customers.
Ebico has announced it will offer the same savings to the less well off that companies like EDF offers to direct debit customers. This comes in response after a statement by Mr Wicks, the Health Minister, saying that many households are paying energy tariffs that are unjust and totally disproportionate.
The not-for-profit company which is committed to tackling fuel poverty will
offer its customers using prepayment meters the same savings.

An estimated 2.3 million homes have a gas prepayment meter and 3.5 million households use an electricity pre-pay meter who are far more likely to be on low incomes than customers using other payment types.* It looks as if something is finally be being done to stop this terrible injustice, said Phil Levermore, Managing Director of Ebico, Mr Wicks comment shows that the big six energy companies will have to lower their prices for households using prepayment meters. As for now, we cant stop energy prices rising, but we can offer prepayment metered customers a deal that gives them the sort of cost savings that, with all the other suppliers, youd have to set up a monthly Direct Debit to get.
*Energywatch. 2007 Energy Consumers Survey

Ends
Notes to Editor
For more information contact Ellie Tooze: 01993 225 061

1. Three and a half million households in the UK pay in advance for their electricity by using pre-payment meters. Over two million pay for gas in the same way. Pre-payment meters are disproportionately used by the less well-off with 35% of single parents pay in advance for their electricity as do 36% of unemployed persons. Energywatch figures show the average dual fuel direct debit customer pays £772 a year for gas and electric, while a prepayment customer pays £967 a difference of £195.
2. One in six British households is experiencing fuel poverty, the highest for almost a decade.
Each winter, fuel poverty is responsible for 20,000 to 50,000 premature deaths in the UK.
www.berr.gov.uk
An estimated 30% of lone pensioners are and 7% of older couples are living in fuel poverty. Energywatch Annual Report, 2007.
Energy efficiency of houses is measured by the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) which assesses insulation and heating, rating from 0 (poor) to 100 (good). A rating above 60 indicates good efficiency standard. The average rate is 51.4, and 82% of households living in fuel poverty live in housing with an SAP under 50. Fuel Poverty and Elderly Report
Prepayment customers have lower incomes than others; 40% were in the two lowest deciles in England in 2005/6 compared with 20% of all customers and less than 5%were in the top 2 deciles. In 2006 19% of those paying for both fuels by prepayment were fuel poor compared with 6% for direct debit customers an incidence of fuel poverty more than 3 times as high amongst prepayment compared with direct debit. The incidence of fuel poverty amongst standard credit customers is also fairly high. FPAG, 2007

3. Ebico Ltd is a not for profit company limited by guarantee and committed to those on low incomes. Ebico, the only not-for-profit domestic energy company in the UK, has been making a real difference to low income households for nine years now. They launched their first product, EquiGas, back in 1999. EquiGas was an innovative domestic gas tariff that delivered lower prices to pre-payment meter (ppm) and payment-plan customers predominantly lower income households by enabling customers who paid by Direct Debit to share the savings related to their chosen payment method. Based on the huge success of EquiGas, Ebico then launched EquiPower in 2002 to challenge exactly the same issues in the domestic electricity supply market. EquiGas and EquiPower are the fairest domestic gas and electricity tariffs in the UK and are competitively priced so that, irrespective of how they pay their bills, many customers can cut their energy bills by switching to Ebico. Thirty thousand UK households have now switched to Ebicos fairer tariffs.

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The Deposit Protection Service (The DPS) has revealed that people worry most about changing their billing address when they rent a new home.

A survey found that 36% of new tenants panicked over remembering to change their phone, gas and electricity bills to their new address.

A further 29% said they lost sleep worrying about packing and unpacking, while one in five revealed that the prospect of moving furniture gave them a headache.

Kevin Firth, Client Services Director at The DPS, warns that tenants must make time to talk to their landlord or agent: “Anyone who has ever moved home knows that it’s a stressful time – one tip to give tenants peace of mind is to ensure that their landlord has signed up to a tenancy deposit protection scheme.”

Tenancy deposit legislation, which was introduced last April, requires landlords to sign up to a scheme or risk a fine of up to three times the deposit amount.

The Deposit Protection Service, the only custodial scheme, protects the tenant’s deposit on behalf of the tenant and landlord, and returns the money to whoever is entitled to it at the end of the tenancy, with interest. Landlords and tenants have already been handed back more than £2.5 million in interest.

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Gas bills to rise by more than £400 this year

Household gas bills could rise by more than £400 this year, as British Gas today signalled another price increase of 20 per cent.

The rise - likely within a matter of weeks - will take average domestic gas and electricity bills above £1,200 after a 15 per cent price rise in January.

Consumer group uSwitch believes households may need to prepare for price rises of as much as 46 per cent for the year as a whole.

"Including the 15 per cent rise in January, the worst case suggests bills could rise by as much as £415 in one year," said uSwitch director Tim Wolfenden.

"We believe there could be a bunch of rises by the end of the year. We foresee increases in August and September, but then a real killer additional rise at the end of the year."

British Gas's parent company Centrica left customers and shareholders at its annual meeting in London today in little doubt they should be braced for far larger bills.

The company said the global oil price, which has soared to $125 a barrel, has also seen the price of gas rocket. British Gas says the amount it has to pay for gas to supply UK households means it can no longer make the profit its City shareholders demand.

"We will take necessary action to deliver reasonable margins in the retail business," Centrica chairman Roger Carr was due to tell the meeting.

The wholesale price of gas has been rising throughout the spring, and the outlook is not getting better.

Forward prices are nearly double what they were last year, with suppliers having to pay up to 85p a therm next winter compared with 48p in the winter just gone.

Asked when a price rise might come, a British Gas spokesman said: "That depends on what happens to the oil price, which has been highly volatile." The spokesman refused to be drawn on how much British prices might have to go up.

However, Mark Todd, director at price comparison website energyhelpline.com, said: "With this announcement, the UK's biggest energy supplier is telling consumers very clearly that massive price rises are coming their way."

Jenny Saunders, chief executive of fuel poverty charity National Energy Action, said a 30 per cent price increase could force 1.2 million UK households into fuel poverty and "completely reverse progress made in this area over the past 10 years".

She added: "Low-income families with children, the elderly and vulnerable households will be hit hardest, but a growing amount of households will be feeling the pinch."

British Gas, which has some 17million domestic customers, effectively sets the benchmark on prices for the entire UK industry.

The Daily Mail Cost of Living Index has reported at 19.1 per cent increase in the price of a shopping basket of food and drink essentials.

Government estimates indicate that for every one per cent increase in fuel bills, another 40,000 households is plunged into fuel poverty - spending more than 10 per cent of disposable income on heat and light.

A 46 per cent increase in a year would suggest an extra 1.84million homes would be classed as fuel poor. This group face a nightmare choice between heating and eating.

North Sea gas supplies are declining rapidly and the Britain is becoming more reliant on expensive imports from the Continent via pipeline.

Gas prices in Europe are - for historic reasons - tied to changes in the price of crude oil, which has soared above 126 dollars a barrel in recent days.

There are concerns that prices are also being forced up because European power giants are actively rationing or blocking supplies to the UK.

Centrica said that, on average, month-ahead prices for gas and power were up 92 per cent and 100 per cent respectively from the same period last year.

Shares in Centrica, which have underperformed the FTSE 100 index by almost 22 percent in the past 12 months, were down 1.6 percent at 283 pence in early trading.

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