According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), last month saw a huge increase in the number of energy consumers’ Direct Debit (DD) failures. Whereas in April last year, 2.13% of DD payments bounced, this year 2.71% of demands were sent to empty bank accounts. This news follows Energy Price Cap hikes in 2024 Q4, and 2025 Q1, despite the Government’s "lower bills" promises. It is no surprise that higher costs lead to greater hardship and payment defaults. But what is still surprising is the Green Blob’s capacity to continue gaslighting the public in the face of devastating arithmetic.
Unfortunately, ONS data on the failure of DD payments only begin in 2019. So it is difficult to form a picture (or a chart) of how domestic finances are being hit by climate and energy policy alone. This era encompasses the madness of lockdown, during which the combined effects of green financial policies, economic suppression, money-printing and then recovery shocked the energy market. That chaos of price spikes, inflation and high interest rates have since been blamed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the major belligerent’s alleged ‘weaponisation of energy’, rather than on Covid-era policy and sanctions. Nonetheless, those factors are in fact harder to spot as features on a steady upward trend, which clearly depicts increased hardship.
But that is not the full picture nor end of the story. Many people who default on DD payments, or who struggle to repay debt, end up on pre-
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Who could possibly think that inflating energy prices through Net Zero policies could lead to fuel poverty and financial difficulties for the poor? Perhaps they should have got one of those well-paid green jobs created by Ed Miliband.
I know people who haven’t paid their direct debit for three years. Make them wait and suffer. These are just collection agencies they have nothing to do with the supplier. Nasty entities to be treated with utter contempt.
It’s a perfect socialist project – deliberately banjax what private enterprise and the market could do very well, then step in to “solve the problem” by taking money from the most productive and giving it to the least. Problem, reaction, solution.
You got it in one…
Green phony planet savers fretting about energy poverty is like Hyenas concerned about dead Wilde Beast.
It’s interesting – and criminal – the way the MSM is managed by way of totally ignoring the Greatest Black Hole ever ie the 350 plus billion pounds which covid clown world is costing us.
No, the real villain of the piece is of course – Putin and his full scale, lol,totally unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, not forgetting the energy crisis caused by the fact he blew up his own pipeline.
And, Europe, led by Germany and under orders from the USA, is re arming. History repeats itself, save that this time the bad guys are the Nazi Russsians. WW3 comes a little closer.
Meanwhile us hicks living in the rural boondocks heat our homes with oil which we buy on the competitive open market. Oil is currently 55p per litre or even less if you get a good deal, we use about 700 to 800 litres a year for hot water and heat. I guess this sector is small enough that it has escaped too much eco-interference although they will doubtless come for us in the end.
I used to run my elderly Peugeot 205 diesel on heating oil, has a lower calorific value, made the car even more gutless, ran OK though, good times past….
Here in France, we use wood for the majority of space heating in winter.
I am about to design and build a system of hot domestic water and central heating using a recently-purchased super efficient wood gasifier (Orlan 18kW).
Which form of fuel? Logs?
Logs and granules.
Sad to see the stats about failed DDs. On the other side of the coin, quite a few customers on regular DD payments (12 a year for an estimated total divided by 12) end up lending cash to the utility firms at zero interest, with accounts that are in credit all the year round. The supplier doesn’t like being in debt, even at the end of a cold winter!
I had lazily left mine at a fixed monthly payment. I kept reducing it as I was hugely in credit, and they kept suggesting it should be increased. Now I pay by DD in full every month.
Collections, Coalitions and Campaigns all spouting claptrap. All pandered to by the Ofgem blob:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/our-role-and-responsibilities
“We work to protect energy consumers… We are responsible for working with government, industry and consumer groups to deliver a net-zero economy, at the lowest cost to consumers.”
State-sponsored schizophrenia.