FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The energy price cap rises to £1,723.36 a year from 1 October for a typical household paying by direct debit, a rise of 3.6 per cent on the previous quarter.
That figure is a Great Britain average, and almost nobody pays it. There are 14 charge restriction regions, each with its own cap. The East Midlands pays £1,672.27. Merseyside and North Wales pays £1,804.30. The gap is £132.03 a year for exactly the same energy use, and it is mostly network costs, which vary by distribution area and which no household can influence.
A second change has gone largely unreported. Prepayment customers now pay less at the cap than direct debit customers — £1,677.89 against £1,723.36, a difference of £45.47 — because Ofgem's levelisation adjustment reduces prepayment by 3 per cent and increases direct debit by 0.5 per cent. This reverses a decade of prepayment premium coverage. It does not make prepayment a good deal: those households still face self-disconnection and the practical costs of topping up.
James Pope, co-founder of Switch4Good, said:
"The number in the headlines describes a household that doesn't exist. What people actually pay depends on where they live, how they pay and how much they use, and the spread between the best and worst case is far wider than any single figure suggests. We've published all fourteen regions so people can look up their own rather than take an average on trust."
All fourteen regions, with a selector for your area: https://www.switch4good.co.uk/energy-price-cap
ENDS
About Switch4Good
Switch4Good is a community switching platform. Households switch their energy and broadband through it, and a share of the commission goes to a cause the household chooses — a school, a charity, a local organisation. Switch4Good Limited is registered in England and Wales, company number 17000412.
Switch4Good earns commission when a household switches. The figures in this release are reconstructed independently from Ofgem's published annexes and reconcile exactly to Ofgem's own published levels.
Notes to editors
Figures are for 1 October to 31 December 2026 at typical domestic consumption — 2,500 kWh electricity and 9,500 kWh gas — paying by direct debit. Source: Ofgem default tariff cap level model v1.31 and Annex 9 Levelisation v1.11, published 26 August 2026.
Great Britain averages: £1,723.36 direct debit, £1,861.16 standard credit, £1,677.89 prepayment.
Ofgem's typical consumption values changed on 1 July 2026, from 2,700 kWh electricity and 11,500 kWh gas to 2,500 and 9,500. Year-on-year comparisons drawn from figures published before that date are not like for like.
VAT on domestic electricity is zero per cent from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, and is already included in these figures rather than being a separate saving.