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Centrica has revealed that British Gas Business H1 profits have been slashed by 95 percent to just £3 million from £61 million in 2014 after a new billing system caused billing issues, raising costs and hitting customer service levels.
The company said in its interim results for the first half of the year that the number of supply points dropped six percent to 802,000 from 854,000 in 2014, as customer service suffered.
Centrica said the delay to issuing customer bills resulted in an increased bad debt charge and additional costs occurred trying to resolve the issue, both affecting profits.
Centrica said it is currently undertaking an extensive transition recovery programme, with continued investment, but that customers are now being served normally and all issues should have been resolved by the end of the year.
In contrast British Gas residential energy supply reported that profits have virtually doubled, increasing by 99 percent to £528 million from £265 million in the first half of 2014, as a result of higher temperature-led energy use and lower policy costs.
This is despite a 5 percent gas price cut being given by British Gas from the end of February. A further 5 percent price reduction was announced in July.
Residential customer accounts have remained steady at 14,733,000 at the end of June 2015, down from 14,778,000 accounts at the end of 2015. Meanwhile its services accounts numbers fell around 2 per cent from 7.970 million accounts in June last year to 7.837 million.
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