The post-pandemic price of residing disaster is continuous to make life troublesome in Britain this summer time – even after a level of stability returned to the worldwide vitality market, permitting home heating payments to climb down after a protracted winter of sky-high costs.
With inflation lodged stubbornly at 8.7 per cent, new woes have emerged for mortgage holders battling excessive rates of interest and within the form of bloated costs within the grocery store aisles, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) placing meals inflation at 18.4 per cent in May.
However, Sainsbury’s chief government Simon Roberts has mentioned he believes that degree is about to start out falling as retail gross sales enhance in response to the hotter climate, noting that the worth of staple gadgets like bread, butter, milk, pasta and meat fell at his grocery store through the second quarter of the yr in response to extra beneficial buying and selling situations.
That mentioned, the information that supermarkets have been accused of profiteering from “rip off” gas costs on the forecourt, leading to drivers being made to pay almost £1bn over the chances for petrol and diesel over the past yr, is prone to additional demoralise a beleaguered public weary of struggling towards the financial system.
Below, we take a look at what help is on the market to households this August.
Extra £1,350 of help being paid out
Despite the expiration of Rishi Sunak’s Energy Bill Support Scheme on the finish of March (an initiative that handed out £400 in month-to-month instalments of £66 and £67), hundreds of thousands of households on low incomes will obtain additional price of residing help from the federal government this yr value as much as £1,350 in complete.
Eight million eligible means-tested advantages claimants, together with individuals on common credit score, pension credit score and tax credit, will obtain £900 in instalments as a part of a programme that started this spring, with the cash going on to financial institution accounts in three tranches, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has mentioned.
There can even be a separate £150 fee for greater than six million individuals with disabilities and an additional £300 for over eight million pensioners.
Here are the fee home windows which were introduced to date, with extra exact dates anticipated later within the yr:
- £301 – First price of residing fee – already issued between 25 April and 17 May (or 2 to 9 May for individuals on tax credit however no different low-income advantages)
- £150 – Disability fee – throughout summer time 2023
- £300 – Second price of residing fee – throughout autumn 2023
- £300 – Pensioner fee – throughout winter 2023/4
- £299 – Third price of residing fee – throughout spring 2024
Bank vacation brings fee schedule change
The traditional state help within the form of advantages and pensions funds can even be going out in August, though the arrival of the Summer Bank Holiday on Monday 28 implies that anybody anticipating to obtain their cash on that date can usually count on it to be paid into their financial institution accounts one working day earlier (Friday 25, as an illustration).
That applies to anybody anticipating to obtain any of the next from the DWP in August:
- Universal credit score
- State pension
- Pension credit score
- Disability residing allowance
- Personal independence fee
- Attendance allowance
- Carer’s allowance
- Employment help allowance
- Income help
- Jobseeker’s allowance
For extra info on how and when state advantages are paid, please go to the federal government’s web site.
Energy Price Guarantee expired as cap lowered
The sweltering climate we are able to count on to proceed into August – which has already introduced the warmest June since data started in 1884 – may not be comfy for everybody however it can at the very least enormously cut back the necessity for having the central heating switched on, which proved such an expense over the course of the winter simply gone.
The authorities’s Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) – launched by Liz Truss final September to make sure households paid not more than £2,500 for his or her electrical energy and fuel, with the federal government subsidising the rest owed to suppliers beneath Ofgem’s Energy Price Cap (EPC) – was prolonged by chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his Budget of 15 March for an additional three months.
Mr Hunt had reportedly been tempted to extend the EPG to £3,000, a significantly much less beneficiant provide that may have eased the burden on the state, however in the end thought higher of it, extending the assure into April, May and June.
Now that the EPG has lastly expired, customers will as soon as extra be paying the EPC fee, which Ofgem set at £2,074 for the third quarter starting 1 July, an enormous fall from the £3,280 it was set at through the second quarter, from which households have been shielded by the intervention of the federal government’s overriding assure.
That 17 per cent lower displays latest drops in wholesale vitality costs – the quantity vitality companies pay for electrical energy and fuel earlier than supplying it to households – and, though it’s a important drop from the eye-watering charges of the final two years, the determine stays greater than £1,000 a yr above pre-pandemic ranges.
As for what may occur subsequent, consultancy agency Cornwall Insight predicts that July’s fall will probably be adopted by one other drop in October, when it expects the everyday annual invoice to be £1,976.
Unfortunately, it believes the everyday invoice will then rise once more in January 2024 to £2,045 and Cornwall doesn’t count on vitality costs to return to pre-Covid ranges earlier than the tip of the last decade on the earliest.
It has additionally warned clients that costs stay topic to wholesale market volatility, with the UK’s reliance on vitality imports which means that geopolitical incidents just like the warfare in Ukraine may proceed to have a detrimental affect.