Second home owners rewarded as they will get Rishi Sunak’s £400 energy bill discount twice

29 comments
  1. …and there it is. We all knew there’d be an attempt to curry favour with their voterbase, and here it is; anyone decent would have made sure people only got payment for one home, not multiple & yet again, it’s at the expense of the taxpayer.

    Tory’s gonna tory.

  2. Depends what the second home is for.

    If rented for example. So long as the £400 went to the bill payer no issue. Lines the landlords pocket not so good.

  3. If its a rented property, the account/s should be in the tenant’s name/s. Thats what we in the industry insist upon. If its still in the landlord name, then its just another rip off.

    If you are renting *right now* and your gas and electric are in your landlord or agency name, check your tenancy agreement and then contact your provider *immediately*. You’re paying the bill, its your money. Not theirs.

    Edit to clarify for the idiot downvoter: for health and safety reasons, along with our collections procedures, its best to have g&e in tenants names. Its logical, dears, not my industry being difficult with you, petal

  4. Out of all of my gripes I don’t think this is up there.

    I understand means testing could be expensive, I understand that there will be inequalities with it because of that.

    I just don’t think it’ll touch the sides for anyone that matters for. Someone with multiple homes is not going to be giggling at getting £400 x property number. It won’t make a blind bit of difference to them either as they will almost certainly be wealthy enough to weather the hits.

    It’s the people that have maxed out their incomes on rent/mortgage that need help, especially those on low incomes.

  5. My assumption is that it costs less to just say to the energy companies ‘knock £400 off everyone’s bill and send us an invoice’ than it would to check every single home in the country to verify whether it’s a second home or not.

  6. From the Resolution Foundation, on the impact of the cost of living assistance.

    “Resolution Foundation:

    * 9.5% uprating of state pension & benefits is *biggest for 32 years* and will cost £15bn

    * Sunak’s package will shield average households from 82% of bill rises;, 93% for poorest”

  7. Good point. My second home is actually my late father’s flat which I have been unable to sell for 2.5 years.

    A previous thread suggested banning second homes due to the housing shortage and I said I’d be delighted for the government to compulsorily purchase it from me.

  8. So how many homes does the queen own? This article says ’30’ for the royal family, which equates to £12,000.

  9. Is this a good look? No.

    Taking optics out of the equation, in the grand scheme of things does it *really* matter? Also no.

    I can imagine the cost of stopping people who own multiple houses would be vastly more than what would be saved. And the amount given is pathetically small anyway. If the chancellor had given a substantial amount of help, then it makes more sense.

  10. This is exactly what happens with Universal Basic Income. The premise is you save a huge chunk of money by not means testing and simply giving it out.

  11. Perfect. Exactly the kind of thing the Conservatives stand for in action. If I were a Conservative voter, I’d be cheering right now.

  12. Think of all the people who are renting out a shit room in a shit house share with utilities included, working their arses off for less than a tenner an hour. They’re seeing the rents going up twice a year.

    They would not see a penny unless its paid to the occupier. There aren’t enough cynical reaction videos or gifs in the world to post at the idea that the Landlord will pass the £400 on. They’ll just raise the rates anyway…

    Edit: this is also free money for those who own holiday cottages etc and rent them out. Again the increases in bills will just be added to the cost of their customers holiday. Literally being given 400 quid a cottage because yay Toryism.

  13. energy companies are earning so much profit that they don’t know what to do with all the money. the tories are creating this “discount” to make themselves look like the heroes, it’s good that they’re doing something, but they should be taxing the energy companies so they’re encouraged to decrease the prices, because once this discount goes away, the energy prices will just stay the same.

  14. Why not just *not* pay the energy companies extra?

    It’s like he has something personal to gain.

    Cap the prices, don’t subsidise. If its not profitable then these companies will be forced to find something that is

  15. he already said that whatever scheme he’d introduced people would be sat arguing about winners and losers. If it was means tested then there would have to be some richest winner and some other poorest loser – etc.

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