The Telegraph reports this morning that British Gas owner Centrica is attempting to shrug off a sharp drop in customer numbers with a range of new tariffs.
In the first three months of the year, Britain’s biggest energy supplier lost 224,000 customer accounts – more than in the whole of 2015 – as customers turned to rival companies. The company has lost customers for five consecutive years, from highs of almost 16 million residential gas and electricity accounts in 2010. Now it has just over 14.4 million accounts. Iain Conn, chief executive, said that Centrica planned to introduce ‘a number of innovative new tariffs’ for customers in coming months, following energy regulator Ofgem scrapping its four-tariff limit last week.
Meanwhile, more than 11 million households across the UK could be owed a total of £1.5 billion from their energy suppliers, according to new research. After the third mildest winter on record, households in credit could be owed roughly £132 each, with 9 per cent able to claim back over £200, the comparison site uSwitch said. Tom Lyon of uSwitch said: ‘Under Ofgem rules, providers must repay any credit on request, so now is the time to read your meter, update your account and reclaim what you’re owed.’
Following estimates by the Treasury yesterday that the economy would be at least 6 per cent smaller by 2030 if Britons voted to leave the EU on June 23, some economists have claimed that it is an exercise in ‘assuming away’ any possible benefits from Brexit. Raoul Ruparel, co-director of Open Europe, the free market think-tank, described the report as ‘one-sided’ for its failure to assess any potential upsides to leaving the EU. He said: ‘It is a cost-benefit analysis of EU membership which looks at the benefits of EU membership and talks about the costs of leaving, but none of the benefits of leaving.’
Justice Secretary Michael Gove, who is heading the Leave Campaign in the EU referendum debate, told the Today programme that if the UK leaves the EU it would save £350 million a week, although this is a disputed figure.
Thisismoney.co.uk reports that a reduction in the number of uninsured drivers on UK roads in the last decade has had little impact on the amount of hit and run incidents. The Motor Insurance Bureau said that the number of uninsured drivers had declined from two million in 2005 to one million this year but found that hit and run convictions hadn’t declined at the same rate. Department for Transport data released last year said there were a total of 163,554 road traffic accidents where an injury was sustained in 2014.
And there’s some good financial news this morning: Halifax research shows that today is this year’s UK Mortgage Freedom Day – the day when new borrowers will have earned enough to pay off the annual cost of their mortgage. Based on the average annual mortgage repayment cost of £7,584 and the average net annual income of £26,023, Halifax has calculated that homeowners with a mortgage will have today earned enough on average to cover their mortgage payments for the rest of 2016.
Comments