Homes ‘owed £7.5bn rebate’

Bid to force power firms to cough up

CAMPAIGNERS want profiteering power firms to be forced to hand back £7.5billion to housholds.

Citizens Advice is demanding a law change to make rebates to millions of customers mandatory.

Household are owed up to £125 each, the charity claims in a report out today.

Industry regulator Ofgem announced a clampdown earlier this year on 14 monopoly firms that distribute our gas and electricity.

They have been ordered to knock £5bn off bills by cutting shareholder payouts. But the move won’t kick in for another three years, when new price controls begin. Now Citizens Advice want companies to hand back what it claims are excess profits from the current eight-year price controls.

It reckons households in Merseyside and North Wales, covered by electricity distribution firm Scottish Power Energy Networks, are owed £125 each.

Those in the South West (Western Power Distribution), and Northern Scotland (Scottish and Southern Energy Networks) should get £110, says the charity.

The smallest rebates per household are £75, the charity claims. Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy said: “Firms should return these unjustified profits to consumers as a matter of priority if they haven’t already.”

However, trade body the Energy Networks Association slammed the report’s findings.

An ENA spokesman said: “The calculations underpinning this analysis are plucked out of thin air and run directly counter to the conclusions of the independent regulator and the Competition and Markets Authority”.

Ofgem said:” We are closely monitoring the performance of all network companies and we will keep up the pressure on them to get the best possible deal for consumers in the current price control. “