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UK missing out on £2.7bn in energy savings

Kit Klarenberg
Written By:
Kit Klarenberg
Posted:
Updated:
16/02/2015

Households across the UK are missing out on a total of £2.7bn of potential savings by failing to switch energy supplier – and 13 million homes are paying £200 too much for their energy annually – according to figures released by the Department of Energy & Climate Change.

The findings accompany the launch of the government’s ‘Power to Switch’ campaign, a four week initiative aimed at encouraging consumers to shop around, switch and save. The campaign follows recent controversy over the failure of the Big Six to pass on savings to their customers.

Commenting on the launch, Energy Secretary Ed Davey said “the power is in people’s hands to get a better deal.”

Reaction has been positive, with even comparison sites (themselves the subject of recent political pressure and scrutiny, as reported by Your Money) welcoming the news.

“It’s great to see the Government get behind consumers and help to encourage people to switch energy providers,” James Padmore, head of energy at comparethemarket.com said. “Although switching time has been brought down from five weeks to 17 days we would like to see this reduced to 7 days. This would further encourage people to switch and with the Big Six suppliers only offering tiny cuts recently, the smaller providers are getting ever more popular and competitive.”

Martin Lewis, creator of MoneySavingExpert.com, stated “we need to shout loud about the benefits of switching tariff. Too many people think energy firms are ‘all the same’. That’s far from true, there are huge differences on both price and customer service.”

“The worry is that news of recent price cuts, even though they were paltry, will have given many false confidence that they’re on a decent deal,” he continued. “Examine the figures and the ugly truth is very different.”


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