Martin Lewis warns British Gas, OVO, EDF, EON, Octopus customers 'you have until Tuesday'

Martin Lewis has warned people who are British Gas, OVO, EDF, EON and Octopus customers they have until TUESDAY. A new energy price cap kicks off on Tuesday October 1, with Mr Lewis - the BBC star - telling ITV Good Morning Britain co-host Susanna Reid it is "meter reading week".

“There is a way to beat the rise but in order to do that you need to understand what’s happening," he said. “Now unless you already know you’re on a fix you’re almost certainly on a standard tariff. It’s well over 80 per cent of homes so it’s almost certainly the majority of people watching will be on one of those tariffs.

“Next week on October 1 we are going to see the price cap rise again by 10 per cent. Now the chart is based on the Ofgem typical use figure. That’s meaningless, nobody is on typical use, it’s far better to look at the percentage. So what does that mean in practice? Well for every £100 you pay on energy right now, from next Tuesday you are going to pay £110 for the same usage. That is what a 10 per cent rise means.

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“But the price cap only lasts three months. So that takes you up to January 1. What’s gonna happen then? About a month ago I was saying it’s likely to go up again then. Wholesale prices have come down, the prices gas and electricity providers pay have come down over recent weeks, so the current prediction is it’s going to come down 2 percent in January and another 1 percent at the end of March.

“But even once we go through those two drops you’re still paying substantially more once we get to next May than you are currently. So the price is gonna rise and stay above where it is right now for the foreseeable future. You are paying, if predictions are right, about 8 percent more than you are paying right now if you do nothing and stick on the Price Cap.

“Which is why I would suggest to you, you need to do something.”