Energy: Billing

(asked on 6th September 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what data his Department collects on the number of vulnerable people applying to energy providers for emergency credit to pay for energy bills.


Answered by
Graham Stuart Portrait
Graham Stuart
Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This question was answered on 22nd September 2022

Ofgem, the energy regulator, reported that in 2020 there were circa 4.1m electricity and 3.3m gas prepayment meter (PPM) customers in the UK.

Ofgem collects data on emergency credit use by the circa 2m smart PPMs for electricity and 1.5m smart gas PPMs at the eight largest suppliers, covering 94% of the market.

Supplier Licence Conditions provide for emergency and out of hours credit by default. Customers can also seek additional ‘discretionary credit’. In Q2 2022, 982,000 electricity and 586,000 gas customers on smart PPMs used emergency credit and 369,000 electricity and 175,000 gas customers used discretionary credit.

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