On the Money: Fixing a way to beat price rises

The moaning’s already started about energy bills rising, even though increases recently announced by the likes of EDF, Scottish Power and Npower won’t take effect until next month.

But when they do come, they’ll hit home hard. Npower, for instance, is hiking electricity charges by 15%.

There have been questions asked in parliament about the fairness of the price increases and Labour has called again for a cap on price increases.

But you don’t have to take the price rises lying down. In fact, you’ll save money by taking action now. How? By switching to a lower-priced tariff.

Even if you’re with British Gas, which has promised to freeze prices for another three months, you can save by switching.

And the savings aren’t small. If you’re on a variable tariff, you could save up to £300 a year by moving to a low-priced fixed-rate tariff.

“Switching is simple,” points out Ben Wilson of GoCompare. “Grab a bill, visit a comparison website, fill in your details and, in a matter of minutes, you could save yourself more than £300 a year.”

There are a range of comparison sites you could use such as GoCompare, uSwitch, MoneySuperMarket and Confused.

What details do you need? Just your name, address and postcode, your current supplier and the average gas and electricity you use or your annual charges. You’ll find the necessary figures on your existing bill.

Once you’ve put the details in, a comparison site will crunch the numbers to find out if there’s a better deal for you. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes and the saving you make will be well worth it.