Recommendation 9

HM Government Deferred

Reducing energy costs for all consumers is a top priority for the Government. The Autumn Budget focused on addressing the cost-of-living pressures facing this country and DESNZ played a key role in delivering a package of bill reduction measures that are central to this. Thanks to decisions in this Budget, we will deliver an average £150 of costs off household energy bills from April 2026. As a result of this action, people can expect to make a significant saving on their bills. Beyond this, the Government believes that our mission to deliver clean power by 2030 is the best way to break our dependence on global fossil fuel markets and protect billpayers permanently. The creation of Great British Energy will help us to harness clean energy, have less reliance on volatile international energy markets, and help in our commitment to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030. This, combined with our Warm Homes Plan to upgrade millions of homes to make them warmer and cheaper to run, is how we will drive down energy bills and make cold homes a thing of the past. We recognise that we need to support households struggling with bills whilst we transition to clean power by 2030. The Warm Home Discount could be considered a form of a social tariff, as it provides discounted energy that is targeted to low-income households. We have expanded the Warm Home Discount scheme to support around 6 million low-income households in total and our ‘Continuing the Warm Home Discount Scheme’ consultation, sets out our intention to continue support for those 6 million households into the next scheme period from 2026/27 to 2030/31. It also seeks views on innovating and improving the scheme. The Government knows that more needs to be done to support vulnerable households who are struggling with their energy bills. We agree that more effective data sharing is paramount to improving the targeting and impact of our schemes, which is why we are focused on improving access to data about households. While consulting on extending the Warm Home Discount beyond 2026, we will consider all options for future bill support. The Government also sought views on recommendations for the design of energy bill support for fuel poor households, such as the eligibility and form of support, as part of the Review of the Fuel Poverty Strategy, and we plan to publish the updated Fuel Poverty Strategy in due course.