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When the energy price jumped last fall, he put a feather blanket on the door and his window to keep the cold water and start serving the Jacob breakfast in his room so he didn’t have to heat the living room. But he was consumed by worry that he could not pay his utility bill and his son was not warm enough.
There is an effect on his health,” Rutherford said, a 29-year-old single mother who lives in Southeast London. “He constantly captured the cold.”
People throughout the UK will face similar choices in the coming months at the cost of energy for millions of households that will increase by 54% on Friday. This is a second big leap in energy bills since October, and one third may advance as a rebound request from the Covid-19 pandemic and now Russian war in Ukraine pushes higher oil and natural gas prices.
Energy costs are the main drivers of increasing consumer prices. While inflation is a phenomenon throughout the world, it is a bigger problem in the UK because it is more exposed to rising natural gas prices rather than relatively gas European neighbors, where utility bills and other costs have also soared. The price of natural gas, which is used for electricity and heating, has more than doubled last year.
In u.K., economists warn the biggest decline of living standards since the mid-1950s, driven by rocket energy costs, food prices and planned tax increases. Disposable household income, adjusted to inflation, is expected to fall an average of 2.2% this year, according to the office for budget responsibilities.
The numbers blurred the impact on low-income people who were hit by disproportionately by the crisis. Because they spend a greater percentage of their budget on food and energy, the poorest quarter of English households will see their real income down 6% this year, according to Yusuf Rowntree Foundation, a think tank that focuses on increasing living standards.
People who rely on government benefits and state pensions are being squeezed because the adjustment of their annual life costs is based on the annual inflation rate until September – before the price of barbed consumers.
That means the benefits are set to increase only 3.1% this year. But inflation jumped to a 30-year high of 6.2% in February and is expected to peak around 8% this year because the war sends the price of food and energy, the Bank of England predicts.
He gets his energy through a prepaid meter, often the only choice for people who are left on the bill. Prepaid meters allow customers to control how much they spend, but they pay high prices and can be left without power if they run out of credit.
It has made him struggle to add meters, pay off his debt he has owed his energy supplier and made his son warm when he came home from day care. He tried to save by turning off the lights, living in the dark except for a small white Christmas tree string that uses less electricity.
I don’t have to live like this before,” he said. “I really don’t have money – and my electricity will be cut.”
