Your energy bill is about to get heavier, and the best thing you can do right now costs nothing at all: read your meter.
Ofgem’s latest price cap came into force this month, pushing the average household’s annual energy costs up by 13%. That works out to roughly £111 more per year for a typical home, landing at around £1,849 annually. It’s not a small number, and it’s arrived at exactly the wrong time of year for millions of families still clearing their heads after Christmas spending.
Energy suppliers and consumer groups are urging customers to submit an actual meter reading rather than letting their provider estimate usage. The reason is simple: if your supplier underestimates how much you’ve used before the cap changed, they’ll bill you at the new, higher rate to make up the difference. Getting a reading in now locks the cheaper units to the cheaper price.
“It takes thirty seconds and it could save you from a nasty correction on your next bill,” said one adviser at Citizens Advice, who noted the charity had already seen a rise in energy billing queries since the cap announcement.
Smart meter owners don’t need to lift a finger, since their usage is submitted automatically. But around 13 million UK households still have traditional meters, and a good chunk of those rarely bother to submit manual readings. Now is a genuinely useful moment to bother.
The 13% rise is being driven largely by higher wholesale gas prices over the summer months, which feed through to the cap with a lag. Ofgem reviews the cap every quarter, meaning prices could shift again in April, up or down depending on how the market moves.
There’s also a broader point here about staying on top of your account. Debt on energy accounts has been rising steadily, with suppliers reporting that more customers are carrying balances forward month to month. A surprise correction bill, the kind that arrives when estimates have drifted wide of reality, can tip people from managing into struggling pretty quickly.
So: go find your meter, note the numbers, log in to your supplier’s app or website, and submit the reading. It genuinely is that boring and that useful.
Whether April brings any relief will depend on factors entirely outside anyone’s control. For now, though, this is one of the few things in your energy bill that actually is.
