Energy bills warning as half of Britons do not carry out this basic check regularly | Personal Finance | Finance
Nearly half of UK residents do not regularly review their energy bills despite the high prices, new research has found.
Only 54 percent of UK residents go out of their way to regularly review their energy bills with men (57 percent) more likely to review than women (51.7 percent), according to research from Utility Bidder.
A survey of 2,000 Brits found that those aged 65 and over have the highest percentage of respondents saying that they regularly review their bills (63.4 percent).
Manchester and Sheffield are among the UK cities with the least understanding of energy bill terms.
Respectively, 6.50 percent and 5.80 percent said they do not understand any of the terms credit, debit, and tariff, which are all important vocabulary when it comes to understanding energy bills.
‘Do you regularly review your energy bills?’
Rank |
City |
Percentage of people that regularly review their energy bills |
Percentage of people that do not regularly review their energy bills |
1 |
Manchester |
78.40% |
21.60% |
2 |
Cardiff |
82.70% |
17.40% |
3 |
Newcastle |
82.90% |
17.10% |
4 |
Sheffield |
85.50% |
14.50% |
5 |
Southampton |
87.40% |
12.60% |
6 |
London |
87.80% |
12.20% |
7 |
Birmingham |
88.00% |
11.90% |
8 |
Leeds |
88.50% |
11.40% |
9 |
Glasgow |
89.40% |
10.60% |
9 |
Edinburgh |
89.30% |
10.60% |
11 |
Nottingham |
89.90% |
10.10% |
12 |
Belfast |
90.00% |
10.00% |
13 |
Norwich |
90.90% |
9.10% |
14 |
Liverpool |
92.60% |
7.30% |
15 |
Bristol |
94.80% |
5.30% |
Bristol was the city with the inhabitants most on top of their bills as 94.80% of respondents in this English city regularly review their energy bills.
James Longley, Managing Director at Utility Bidder said:“With the cost of energy constantly fluctuating, understanding your energy bills and energy usage is critical. At Utility Bidder, we want British homeowners and businesses to be getting the best value for their energy, and help you get a better understanding of your spending.
“With this in mind, we’ve devised the Billing Awareness and Misconceptions Report which aims to highlight the most important questions when it comes to reviewing energy bills. To gather this data, we used TLF Research to create a survey asking respondents about how well they monitor and understand their energy bills.
“A selection of questions such as ‘do you regularly review your energy bills’ and do you get confused by your energy bill?’ were put to 2,000 UK respondents – and the findings are extremely interesting at a granular level.
“Our findings are also of great interest in determining the regions and major UK cities with the most considered approach to energy bills. For example, Manchester has the highest percentage of respondents who do not regularly review their bills of the 15 major cities included in our findings, as well as the highest percentage of people that get confused by their bill.”