ouseholds have been urged to ship meter readings to their vitality provider forward of Ofgem’s lowered value cap coming into impact on July 1.

The common family vitality invoice will fall by £426 a yr from July after Ofgem dropped its value cap following tumbling wholesale costs.

The regulator introduced it's chopping its value cap from £3,280 to £2,074 from July 1, marking the primary time shoppers on default tariffs have seen their costs fall for the reason that world gasoline disaster took maintain greater than 18 months in the past.

Households have been partly shielded from the newest rise in costs by the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee (EPG), which restricted annual vitality prices to £2,500 for the common family – subsidising Ofgem’s value cap.

Ofgem’s newest minimize means its cap will once more govern family payments, leading to a discount of £426 from £2,500 to £2,074 – a fall of about 17%.

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Households ought to submit meter readings earlier than midnight on June 30 to make sure they're paying the decrease costs as quickly as they arrive into impact.

Accurate readings will cease the family’s provider from estimating utilization and probably making use of the outdated greater costs to vitality that's used after June 30.

Those who, for no matter cause, can't submit readings forward of June 30 ought to accomplish that as near the date as doable, retaining a date-stamped photograph as proof.

The vitality value cap units a restrict on the utmost quantity suppliers can cost for every unit of gasoline and electrical energy.

The headline value cap determine is a median throughout households relatively than an absolute cap on payments, so those who use extra pays extra.

It’s essential that you simply take a meter studying with the intention to profit from the worth drop

Gareth Kloet, vitality spokesman on the Go Compare deal comparability web site, stated: “This drop will come as a very welcome relief for many households who have been struggling to pay their energy bills in the past year.

“If you compare energy prices with winter 2021 – when the price cap was set at £1,277 – the past 12 months have been a huge struggle for many, so this weekend’s drop is definitely a step in the right direction. However, it’s important that you take a meter reading so that you can make the most of the price drop.

“By taking a meter reading on June 30, before the price drop comes into force, it will mean that your energy company cannot charge you at the higher rate for any units that have been used after that date.”

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, stated: “As the new price cap comes in for most households, customers are still going to be paying roughly the same for their energy as they did last winter.

“And after months of inflation and the wider cost of living crisis, people are even less able to afford these high energy bills.

“The Government needs to use the summer to fix Britain’s broken energy system, because for millions of people the energy bills crisis is far from over.

“This means ramping up energy efficiency programmes, introducing a Help To Repay scheme to deal with the record levels of public energy debt and reforming energy pricing arrangements so that the benefits of cheap renewable energy are passed onto households.”