A tenant’s guide to a winter in which the good news and the bad news about energy arrive three months apart, with what I am doing about it in a flat I do not own

Energy Bills This Winter: A Renter’s Plan

In July the new Prime Minister began his time in office by cutting electricity bills. I remember it clearly, because my direct debit went down by enough to buy a round, and I did.

A business news channel reported at the time that he had kicked off his premiership by taking money off energy bills. It was the first thing any government had done in years that showed up in my actual bank account. I was, briefly, a fan.

This week I read the other half. A daily bulletin for business owners, of all things, carried the line. Household bills are forecast to rise 16 per cent in January, according to an energy consultancy. The reason given is the conflict in the Middle East and what it has done to prices.

So. Down in July, up in January. I said the short Welsh word.

What Sixteen Percent Means

I share a two-bedroom flat in Leyton with a flatmate called Priyanka and a boiler we believe to be older than both of us. Our gas and electricity together come to about a hundred and forty pounds a month, averaged over the year.

Sixteen per cent on that is twenty-two pounds a month. Eleven each.

That is not going to put me on the street. But it lands in January, which is the month when you are using the most, have just had Christmas and are waiting for a pay day that seems to recede like a mirage. And it is a forecast for the cap, which is a limit on unit prices. If it is cold and we use more, we pay more than sixteen per cent more.

For someone in a bedsit with electric heaters, or a family in a draughty house, it is a great deal worse.

The Renter’s Problem

Every guide to saving energy tells you to insulate the loft, replace the boiler and fit double glazing. Lovely. I do not have a loft. It is not my boiler. The windows belong to a man in Chigwell.

That is the thing nobody says. The big savings are in the fabric of the building, and tenants have no say over the fabric. A landlord has little reason to spend thousands on insulation when it is the tenant who pays the bills.

There are rules about minimum energy ratings for rented homes, and they are meant to be getting stricter. Our flat scrapes over the line. I can tell you from inside it that scraping over the line and being warm are different things.

So what follows is a list of what you can do when you own nothing but the kettle.

What I Am Actually Doing

One. I have found the boiler’s flow temperature. It is a dial on the front that sets how hot the water going to the radiators is. Ours was at maximum. Turning it down to about sixty makes a modern boiler run more efficiently and the flat is just as warm, it only takes slightly longer. It costs nothing and you do not need permission.

Two. Draughts. I have spent eleven pounds on self-adhesive foam strip and a brush for the letterbox. The sash window in my room had a gap you could post a letter through. It is removable, so the man in Chigwell need never know.

Three. Thick curtains, closed at dusk. I got mine from a charity shop in Walthamstow for eight pounds. They are a brown that I can only call municipal. They work.

Four. Radiator foil behind the two radiators on outside walls. Six pounds a roll.

Five. The timer. We had the heating coming on at five in the morning for reasons lost to history. It now comes on forty minutes before the first of us gets up, and goes off when the second leaves.

Six. Heat the person. I have an electric blanket that costs a few pence an hour to run and a dressing gown of a thickness normally associated with polar exploration.

Total outlay: about forty pounds. I reckon it will save more than the January rise.

Things to Check

Are you on the right tariff? If you have never switched or chosen, you are on the supplier’s default. That is what the cap applies to. Fixed deals sometimes come in below it. Sometimes they do not. It is worth ten minutes on a comparison site when the January figure is confirmed.

Is your meter being read? Send a reading on the last day of December. Otherwise the supplier may estimate, and some of what you used at the old price gets charged at the new one.

How do you pay? Direct debit is cheapest. If you are on a prepayment meter you are no longer charged more for the privilege, which was a scandal for years, but check your standing charge.

Are you entitled to anything? There is a discount for people on certain benefits, paid automatically in most cases. Councils have hardship funds. Suppliers have their own. Nobody advertises these. You have to ask.

The Argument About the Cap

I should be fair to the people who set these things.

The cap is not a subsidy. It does not hold prices down. It limits the profit a supplier can make on top of what the energy costs them. When wholesale prices rise, the cap rises. That is how it is designed. Blaming the regulator for January is like blaming the thermometer.

The July cut was something different: a decision by the government to take certain charges off bills and pay for them another way. That was a choice, and it cost money. Critics said at the time that it was moving the cost from the bill to the taxpayer, who is the same person in a different hat. They had a point. I spent my saving on a round anyway.

What neither can do is control the price of gas on the world market. A war does that.

The argument for something more permanent is about insulation. Britain has some of the leakiest housing in Europe. Every winter we pay to heat the sky. A serious programme to fix that, especially in rented homes, would do more than any amount of fiddling with the bill. It is slow, dull and expensive, and so each government announces it and none finishes.

Talk to Your Flatmate

One last thing, learned the hard way. Have the conversation in October.

Priyanka runs warm and I run cold. Last winter we fought a silent war over the thermostat that ended with a note on the fridge. This year we sat down with the bill and agreed a number: nineteen degrees, evenings and mornings, jumpers assumed. It is written on the boiler.

Splitting a rising bill with someone you live with is a test of character. It is better taken before the first cold night than during it.

For a less practical response to the British winter, The London Prat offers its British satirical news on putting the heating on and its London satirical news about wearing a coat indoors. Bohiney Magazine reports from a country that heats its houses to tropical levels and then complains about the bill.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/