Chilly Britons turning up the heat... in August
THREE in ten families have already switched on the heating during Britain’s miserable 2017 summer, research revealed yesterday.
The UK has faced plenty of wet and miserable conditions over recent weeks which have seen temperatures plummeting even as low as 2C in north west Scotland on Sunday night.
June was the sixth wettest on record, according to the Met Office, while July was the 24th wettest since 1910.
And this led to more than eight million households turning the heating on, with an estimated further 4.6 million families also considering it, according to a survey by energy price comparison site uSwitch.com. Claire Osborne, uSwitch.com energy expert, said: “It wouldn’t be the Great British summer without a certain amount of miserable weather.
“But the chilly conditions this year are enough to make anyone consider cranking up the thermostat.
“It’s incredible that eight million homes already have their heating on before we’re even halfway through August.
“It’s understandable given how cold it’s been over the past few weeks, but consumers need to consider the impact it will have on their energy bills.
“Energy prices continue to rise and we know that over a third of bill payers are already worrying about the cost of keeping warm over the winter.
“With so many people giving in to the cold and turning the heating on, households could find their annual bill gets a lot larger than expected.
“But shopping around now and switching to a better deal, before even colder weather bites, could save hundreds of pounds.
“This would be enough to cover the expense of already having the heating on.”
One in three Britons said they would usually wait until the end of the school summer holidays in early September to consider switching the heating on. And three in ten said they have already dug out the winter woolies to cope with low temperatures.
uSwitch said 20 per cent of the 2,000 adults surveyed had also ran hot baths just to warm up.
A further eleven per cent have put their winter duvet back on their bed and eight per cent have unpacked their winter coat.
Met Office spokeswoman Nicola Maxey explained to the Daily Express: “Rainfall for June was 55 per cent above average and July was 37 per cent above average. And in the first ten days of August, rainfall is 43 per cent above average.
“For the country as a whole, temperatures were around 0.1C below average.”