- Title: Britain's energy price cap a 'disaster' says fuel poverty charity
- Date: 26th August 2022
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (AUGUST 26, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) NATIONAL ENERGY ACTION CHIEF EXECUTIVE, ADAM SCORER, SAYING: "It's the summer, the heating is not on, but we know that people aren't cooking food, aren't washing clothes, aren't giving their children a shower or a bath, cooking only with the kettle. Huge amounts of privation which affect the quality of life. When we head into the winter, into the heating season, that's when it gets absolutely drastic. That's when we know that people will either heat a room in a house for an hour or two a day or not heat at all. There would be some really desperate and dangerous, we call them coping mechanisms, but they're not about coping. They're about trying to survive. So it's bad now. We head into winter. It gets worse then."
- Embargoed: 9th September 2022 08:39
- Keywords: Adam Scorer Energy prices National Energy Action October price cap Ofgem electricity energy price cap fuel poverty gas meter power bills
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: UK
- Topics: Europe,Government/Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA00A064525082022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: British energy bills will rise 80% to an average of 3,549 pounds ($4,188) a year from October, regulator Ofgem said on Friday (August 26), putting millions at risk of fuel poverty, charity National Energy Action said.
The new average bill for electricity and gas for 24 million households means energy bills will have almost trebled from October last year when they were an average of 1,277 pounds, a major factor in inflation rising to a 40-year high.
Chief executive of National Energy Action, Adam Scorer, told Reuters the new price rise was "a disaster" that will send nine million households into fuel poverty, up from four million households in September 2021.
Fuel poverty is determined if a household has to spend more than 10% of its income on power bills, Scorer explained.
Ofgem said it was not giving projections for January when a new cap will take effect because the market remained too volatile, but it said the market for gas in winter means that prices could get "significantly worse" through 2023.
Energy bills have soared this year after wholesale gas and power prices, already rising after the pandemic, surged following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's move to curtail gas exports to Europe.
The two candidates vying to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister have clashed over how to respond.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak's proposals, which include suspending environmental levies or cutting a sales tax, have been dismissed by analysts as too little to avert the unprecedented hit to household budgets.
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