Standing charges: domestic retail options
Case for change
Summary
This section outlines the case for change for reducing standing charges and the impact on wider affordability and debt challenges.
What we want to do
We want to hear your views on our case for change on standing charges.
Details
Standing charges have a role to play in the retail energy market. They help energy suppliers to:
- recover operational costs of serving each consumer, like billing, metering, and company premises
- fund important network upgrades and maintenance
- support government social and environmental schemes, like the Warm Home Discount scheme
All these costs are necessary to keep consumers connected to an energy supply and move towards net zero.
Our standing charges call for input showed that many consumers find them confusing, do not agree that they are needed, and think that they penalise low-income, low energy use customers.
We cannot make the fixed system costs go away, but we can allocate them differently and work to give customers more choice in how they pay these costs.
Before you give us your views
You’ll need to read the full details in the Case for change chapter of the discussion paper (PDF, opens in separate tab).