Downing Street has said it will not offer a “bespoke campaign” to help people find ways to save energy, but will ramp up a separate Cabinet Office drive which sets out cost of living support.
Number 10 denied the move was a U-turn on previous suggestions that Liz Truss was “ideologically opposed” to telling households about methods to save money on energy.
Last week, the Guardian revealed that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had begun work on a campaign asking households to turn their thermostats down and use their dishwashers and washing machines at times when energy demand is lower.
The measures had been discussed between the business department, energy companies and the network operator National Grid.
However, the business department then said there were “no plans for the government to tell the public to reduce usage for the sake of our energy supplies”.
Truss has been vocally opposed to “nanny state” policies but the cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi said that the campaign to encourage household energy saving would have cost up to £15m and had been shelved on cost grounds.
Zahawi said on Sunday that any new campaign by the government would have been similar to information campaigns by the National Grid and regulator Ofgem and risked repetition.
On Monday, Number 10 said it would ramp up its Help for Households campaign, a website launched in July detailing all the government help available to help with the cost of living, including the freeze on energy bills and additional support measures for vulnerable households. Daytime TV adverts began running over the weekend, after adverts on posters and radio began in July.
Truss’s spokesperson said that campaign would also now be signposting consumers to ways to cut their energy bills – but linking them to the campaigns by Ofgem and the National Grid. The current version of the site does not offer any additional tips apart from the links to the external site.
“We are looking at ways to how to use existing campaigns to further signpost people,” the spokesperson said. “The Help for Households site sets out significant detail about the energy price guarantee and there is detail in there about ways people can further save money through things like insulation if you put in relevant information, and it links to other sites like Ofgem.”
Asked if the prime minister was opposed to going any further, the spokesperson said the information was “readily available and we are signposting people to it”. Number 10 said there had been 3m visits to the site since July and 40% had gone on to seek further info on gov.uk or other sites.
