Household bills blow for 6m

MILLIONS of households will see their gas and electricity bills soar in the coming weeks.

It follows today‘s announcement by supplier npower that the average gas bill will rise by 5.2%, from February. Electricity customers face an average increase of 5.8% from 1 April. Around 6m customers will be affected.

To make matters worse, from tomorrow the cost of gas and electricity for Britsh Gas customers will rise by 5.8% on average. Over the past nine months alone British Gas has put up prices by 8.4%, according to industry watchdog Energywatch.

Suppliers blame rising costs of their own. In October the wholesale price of gas surged by a staggering 80%, despite low demand and no obvious supply problems.

Meanwhile customers have been warned to expect further increases across the board. Jon Miller, product director at uSwitch.com said: 'We fully expect other providers to follow suit.'

However, uSwitch has slammed the rises as 'grossly unfair'. It said: 'In previous years reductions in wholesale prices were never passed to consumers.'

Allan Asher, chief executive of industry watchdog Energywatch advises switching suppliers to keep bills down.

'Consumers do not need to suffer the winter blues because of price hikes by npower and British Gas. Switching is easy and could save customers more than £100. We estimate there is up to £1bn in potential savings for energy consumers,' he said.