We hear you and we're trying hard to bring them down. Increases to the electricity standing charge over the past few years have been mostly driven by decisions by Ofgem, the regulator, to shift costs off the unit price (how much you pay for what you use) and on to the standing charge (a flat fee you pay even if you use nothing). The big one was Ofgem's Targeted Charging Review (TCR), which we strongly opposed, leading to major changes in 2022 and 2023 that sharply pushed the standing charge up. We've kept our standing charges below the price cap (spending around £30 million a year to do so) and we offer standing charge holidays to our most vulnerable customers.
Watch our CEO, Greg, talking about standing charges in February 2026.
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Standing charges vary depending on how tricky it is for suppliers to get power to your part of the country – like in rural areas, where the networks are more spread out and there are fewer households to split the cost. Each of the electricity distribution networks (DNOs) combines their costs and splits them between everyone living in the area where they operate, which means each region’s standing charge varies slightly.