British Gas price cuts welcomed
February 12, 2007 at 3:18 am
Finally some good news for gas customers! British Gas has started a price war with rival gas companies by significantly cutting the cost of its gas and electricity bills.
British Gas has announced that it will be cutting domestic gas bills by 17% and electricity bills by 11% from March 12th, in what will be its first significant price cuts in six years. Furthermore, the company is offering its customers the chance to protect themselves against future price increases by fixing their bills at this new rate until May 2008. This means that the company has now gone from being the most expensive of the six big gas suppliers in the UK to being the cheapest.
Before deciding to move back to British Gas consumers are advised to wait and see how other gas suppliers will react to the news. Npower has said that it will soon be offering its customers competitive energy prices. While Scottish and Southern Energy, who announced impending price cuts at the beginning of the month, are now promising even greater reductions than those offered by British Gas. A spokesperson from SSE said in a recent article for the Guardian: ‘We are surprised it [the British Gas cut] was not a bigger reduction. They are not leading the market, they are playing catch-up.’
The price cuts have been welcomed by Ofgem (the industry watchdog), charities and consumer groups who have heavily criticised rising gas prices and the failure of gas companies to pass on the benefits of falling wholesale gas prices to the customer. NEA (National Energy Action), the leading national fuel poverty charity, has also praised British Gas’s introduction of a social tariff which will help over 750,000 of the companies most vulnerable customers pay their energy bills.
With the recent spell of cold weather any reductions in gas prices will be warmly welcomed, it is just unfortunate they didn’t come a little earlier!
