SSE to drop gas prices

In what is the latest move by a Big Six supplier to reduce tariffs, the company said the reduction will take effect on March 29 and will save household gas customers on average £32 a year. SSE’s announcement follows E.ON price reduction last week.

However, these welcomed price cuts do not fall in line with the dropping wholesale cost of gas, which in the past year has fallen more than 30%.

Some believe so. After SSE announced a 5.3 per cent cut in gas prices from the end of March, there was wide-scale condemnation of the company.

But Martin Lewis, founder of Money Saving Expert and www.cheapenergyclub.co.uk, branded the reduction as “trivial”.

James Padmore, head of energy, at comparethemarket.com, said the cut was created to disguise the fact that they are still not passing enough savings on to their customers.

Yet SSE today denied it was using falling wholesale costs to bolster margins, and pointed to its price freeze promise that has been in place since March 2014.

Ms Rudd called for other United Kingdom providers to drop their prices.

“As three of the big six suppliers have now lowered standard prices twice since the start of 2015, the pressure is now well and truly on EDF, npower and ScottishPower to follow suit”.

“Lower prices are good news but prices can and should be cut much further”.

The group claimed it was its third price reduction in a row and said it had significantly reduced the number and duration of power cuts experienced by network customers.

That in itself has led to accusations of a lack of competitiveness in the supply of gas and electricity, and is one of the reasons the sector was referred to the Competition and Markets Authority for an investigation. The energy companies are reviewing their prices after pressures from ministers and consumer watchdog the Competition and Markets Agency (CMA) to adapt to low wholesale prices.

SSE’s has said that their customer accounts fell to 8.28 million as of December 31.

Chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies said: “SSE remains a resilient and diverse business, with a strong commitment to operational efficiency and delivering value for customers and investors”.