Campaign sees 80 per cent increase in switching

The number of households switching energy supplier saw an 80 per cent increase since the same time last year, thanks to the government's recent switching campaign.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said its ‘Power to Switch’ campaign, which launched on 16 February, has successfully encouraged more than 130,000 consumers to switch and resulted in a collective saving of £38 million.

Figures also reveal a 60 per cent increase in dual fuel and a 193 per cent increase in total savings for energy customers compared with the same period last year.

Energy secretary Ed Davey said the increase “shows that people want better deals from energy providers – and our reforms to the market have driven competition and made that possible”.

The campaign ran for four weeks, using national, regional and online advertising to make consumers aware of the savings they could make by switching.

Switching has seen a dramatic increase recently, with government data revealing that the number of switches in February shot up to 317,000, in correlation with price cuts from all the major energy suppliers.

Eon was the first of the big six to cut its standard gas tariff by 3.5 per cent on 13 January, followed by British Gas (5 per cent), Scottish Power (4.8 per cent), Npower (5.1 per cent), SSE (4.1 per cent) and EDF (1.3 per cent) over the rest of the month.

However, Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert warned that the cuts would have “given many false confidence that they’re on a decent deal”.  

He said: “Even after price cuts, someone on a big six supplier standard tariff with typical use will pay £1,158 a year, whereas switch to the cheapest tariff and they’d pay just over £900 a year.”

In January, Ofgem strengthened its code of conduct for price comparison websites, requiring them to show all available tariffs, use simple language and make it clear which energy companies they have commission arrangements with to make switching easier for consumers. Sites have been given until the end of this month to comply and, so far, eight of the 11 accredited under Ofgem’s code have made the changes.

As part of the government’s programme of energy market reforms, switching times have successfully been halved from five weeks to 17 days.

Davey said he wants consumers to be able to switch energy their energy supplier within 24 hours and, in February, Ofgem announced it had developed a five-stage plan to collaborate with industry workgroups and establish a ‘blueprint’ design for next-day switching using a new centralised registration service.