Cllr Ben Cooper

Interesting to hear the Prime Minister announce a review of the 'standing charges' on our energy bills. This daily charge - which is made up of various, hard to understand costs incurred by the companies that run our energy system - is levied on consumers irrespective of how much energy they use. For consumers, it can be the most frustrating thing to see the charge added to your bill every single day when you're doing everything you can to keep your usage as low as possible. There have long been proposals to take standing charges off of our energy bills, and to instead cover the costs through the Treasury. This has the obvious benefit of helping lower income households, as those of us who earn more pay higher amounts of tax. It's a more progressive way of covering the costs. But the amounts involved are not insignificant, with estimates suggesting a more than £5bn a year cost to the Treasury. If this can be offset against savings from changing subsidies given to bill payers in other ways, it may just provide a longer term cut to energy bills for those who need it most. Finally, any re-balancing of costs between electricity and gas could make it easier for more households to swap out their gas boilers for electric heat pumps if they wish to, helping reduce our overall demand for gas and therefore our exposure to global gas markets. Energy bills continue to be one of the most important factors that voters consider when deciding if the economy is heading in the right direction. It's right the government looks to do more to help change the assumption that our bills will just keep going up and up.