Britons with prepay meters urged to use vouchers as £160m goes unclaimed
Ministers have urged households using prepayment meters to redeem vouchers offering support for their energy bills, as the government said £160m remains unclaimed.
Households with traditional analogue prepayment meters are entitled to claim discounts of up to £400 on their energy costs under the energy bills support scheme, which is open until 30 June.
But new figures show more than a fifth of the vouchers, 2.4 million, remain unclaimed. The government said that £780m in vouchers had been sent to consumers, with £620m claimed.
The vouchers were sent by post or email and need to be taken to a post office or PayPoint vendor to be credited to the meter. For households on direct debit and those with a smart prepay meter, the payments were automatically passed to consumers by their energy supplier.
Research showed that for the fifth month in a row, London had the lowest redemption rate, with a third of vouchers still unused at the end of February. About 26% of vouchers in Scotland and the south-east of England are also yet to be used.
The voucher scheme is part of a wider government effort to bring down the cost of gas and electricity for consumers because of the energy crisis fuelled by the war in Ukraine.
After months of warnings from campaigners and business leaders, the government intervened last autumn to cut household energy bills. Last month the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, U-turned on a plan to make its subsidy scheme less generous.
Data has consistently shown that between a fifth and a quarter of the prepay vouchers have remained unredeemed since the scheme’s launch.
Amanda Solloway, the minister for energy consumers and affordability, said: “Even as the warmer weather sets in I urge anyone on a traditional prepayment meter to
Read more on theguardian.com
