Power firm’s profit triples – a month after price increase

PROFITS have tripled at one of the UK’s biggest energy companies, it emerged yesterday – a month after it raised prices for millions of households.

Last month SSE blamed rising costs of supplying electricity for its ‘difficult’ decision to increase average bills for dual-fuel customers by 6.9 per cent or £73 per year.

But yesterday it revealed that its annual profit before tax rose to £1.8billion for the year to March 31, from £593million in the previous year. Campaigners said it was a kick in the teeth for customers.

SSE, based in Perth in Scotland, has 8million energy accounts, down from 8.21million last year. Mike Shamash, director of nonprofit switching company the People’s Power, said: ‘Given the profits that they are making, it is profiteering off either people that cannot switch because they have got too much debt, or people that don’t understand how to switch. I would urge them, rather than to continue losing customers, to become a bit more ethical.’

Emma Hughes, from energy price campaign group Switched On London, said SSE and other energy companies were ripping people off. ‘The fact that they are announcing these huge profits today shows it’s nothing to do with costs increasing; it’s protecting their own profits, and everything gets handed on to the consumer,’ she said.

‘It just shows that the whole energy market is not working – the Big Six have such a big monopoly.’

The figures come ahead of publication today of the Tory manifesto in which Theresa May is expected to confirm a price cap on household energy prices. SSE warned yesterday that it could lead to ‘unintended consequences’.

Some 4.76million out of 6.76million of SSE’s household accounts are on its standard variable tariff, used across the industry as a default for customers who have not chosen another plan. But they are typically more expensive than the companies’ other tariffs, and the Prime Minister is expected to pledge to cap them.

SSE’s electricity price increase in April meant customers on the tariff would pay on average 14.9 per cent more for electricity, or £1.40 per week. It froze gas prices.

An SSE spokesman said: ‘The profit margin made reflects factors including higher than average consumption. Profit margins move around year on year due to the volatile costs associated with supplying energy. When looking over a longer period of time, SSE has averaged a 5.9 per cent profit margin before tax over the past five years.’

AFTER raising its prices by 6.9 per cent in April, while shedding crocodile tears over its ‘deep regret’ at the increase, energy giant SSE yesterday reported profits had tripled at £1.8billion in the year to March.

The Perth-based firm has joined other big power suppliers – mostly foreign-owned – in attacking Theresa May’s plan to cap household energy bills.

But while they exploit customers so shamelessly, have they anyone but themselves to blame if the Government feels compelled to intervene? WELL, what did he expect? After George Osborne’s appallingly misguided tax raid on buy-to-let landlords, lending in this vital sector plunged by 50 per cent, worsening an acute housing crisis. Isn’t this a cautionary tale for any chancellor who thinks he has hit on a reliable new source of revenue?