Two more energy providers hike bills

22/08/2008

E.ON and Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) have become the third and fourth of the "big six" energy providers in the UK to impose new price rises.

Yesterday, E.ON announced that it would hike gas bills by 26 per cent and electricity by 16 per cent for its customers from today.

This was followed by a statement from SSE, which will impose its own price rises of 29 and 19 per cent for the respective services on Monday.

Both providers blamed high wholesale costs for the moves.

Alistair Phillips-Davies at SSE said: "Energy suppliers have to take steps towards covering their costs and I am sorry that we cannot delay these price rises any longer.

"Although this will be little consolation, these increases would have been even higher but for the fact wholesale prices have fallen back a little in recent weeks."

Graham Bartlett, a managing director at E.ON, added: "I'm very aware of the effect that the announcement will have on our customers and I recognise that this is a very tough time for everyone.

"This was not an easy decision to make and we've tried to keep these increases as low as possible while protecting as many of our customers as we can."

Tags; Housing Debt and Bills,

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