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<\/p>\nConsumers being hit with a huge price rise as he warned of ‘particularly bad news’ – but people can take action now<\/p>\n
10:01, 26 Aug 2026Updated 10:03, 26 Aug 2026<\/p>\n
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Martin Lewis advised everyone to fix their energy price now(Image: ITV)<\/p>\n
Martin Lewis has given households advice after they were hit by a big rise in energy costs. Anyone who is with a company such as Octopus Energy, British Gas, E.ON Next:, OVO Energy, EDF Energy and Scottish Power needs to check they aren\u2019t on a fixed rate – and sign up quickly.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said rising energy bills are \u201cdifficult\u201d for people after Ofgem raised its price cap by 4% to a three-year high and analysts forecast a further 9% hike from January. Ofgem said the price cap will rise by \u00a360 per year \u2013 or \u00a35 per month \u2013 to \u00a31,723 for the average household using both electricity and gas if this level was sustained for a year.<\/p>\n
In a further blow for households, analysts Cornwall Insight released their latest forecast on Wednesday for a further 9% increase to the price cap in the New Year. This would put an average January bill up to \u00a31,872 a year, \u00a3149 higher than October\u2019s \u00a31,723.<\/p>\n
Appearing on Good Morning Britain this morning personal finance expert Mr Lewis explained how the cap had changed in the last 12 months with a huge rise amounting to 17% – \u2018particularly bad news\u2019: \u201cThis is a 3.6% rise over the crucial start of winter period. This price cap lasts from the 1st of October until the end of the year. Now when we had the price cap that started in July and that was up 12.6%. The mitigation for that is it was over the low use summer period. But this is a 3.6% rise on top of the 12.6% rise.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeaning that when we go into October, prices will be 17% higher than they were in April. And that is over the winter period. So this is particularly bad news.\u201d<\/p>\n
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On the issue of what people need to do now, he said fixing is an obvious choice – if not done already: \u201cI think it\u2019s important if we look forward first and then you\u2019ll see that currently the prediction is the January price cap. Remember the price cap moves every 3 months. It used to be every six months. I campaigned against them making the moves every 3 months, but they\u2019re still continuing to do it. So, on the 1st of January, the current prediction is we\u2019re going to see rates rise again by 9% in the January period. This is because of what\u2019s going on in the Middle East. This is all about wholesale rates in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
“They do it. They look at wholesale rates over an average period. That last three-month period ended last week that they looked at for October. That\u2019s why it\u2019s going up and those rates are even higher today than they were a couple of weeks ago. They\u2019re the highest they\u2019ve been since the Ukraine crisis. So, the current look is January is going to get even worse. What can you do? Well, if you are on the price cap, if you\u2019re on your company\u2019s standard variable tariff, if you\u2019ve not done anything, you can get a fix. Fix rates are not brilliant right now. The are about 7% cheaper than the current cap. So let\u2019s say they\u2019re 7% cheaper than the current cap, but that cap is going up 4% in October and is predicted to be going up 9% in January.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said they govenrment has tried to mitigate the change by cutting electricity VAT that also starts on the 1st of October and that lasts until March. He added: \u201cIt\u2019s a six-month cut. Without that cut in VAT, we would have seen prices rising by about 6.6%. But the fact that electricity VAT has been cut does mean that this is a slightly more complex scenario than people would understand.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst thing I need to say, remember the price cap only applies if you are on your firm\u2019s standard tariff, the standard variable tariff. That\u2019s the default tariff, the I haven\u2019t fixed tariff, the I did nothing when my fix ended tariff, then this applies to you and you will in almost all cases see your prices rise. If you\u2019re already on a fix, if you\u2019re already locked into a special deal, this does not affect you. A fix is a fix. Your deal is a deal and you will stay on that price until that fix ends and then if you do nothing at that point you\u2019ll be moved on to the standard variable rate so the price cap.<\/p>\n
Rising energy bills are \u201cdifficult\u201d for people, and the Government will continue to look for ways to get prices down in the long term, Andy Burnham has said. Speaking to reporters from a supermarket in London, the Prime Minister said: \u201cIt\u2019s difficult for people and I recognise that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s why, within days of taking office, I announced that we would remove VAT off electricity bills to give people that little bit of help. That kicks in from October.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the price cap will have an impact, but it is what we can do right now. And we\u2019ll continue to look as we go forward at how we get energy prices down in the long term, and that\u2019s what we need to do too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consumers being hit with a huge price rise as he warned of ‘particularly bad news’ – but people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21068],"tags":[21132,21104,21103,21131,22036,21130,21129],"class_list":["post-80450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-e-on","tag-british-gas","tag-e-on","tag-e-on-se","tag-edf","tag-martin-lewis","tag-octopus-energy","tag-ovo-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}