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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
World
Lottie Gibbons

Warning to anyone paying electricity bills in Merseyside or North Wales

Merseyside and North Wales have the highest electricity bills in the UK, paying over £800 on average a year - £100 more than the area with the cheapest electricity costs, Northern Ireland.

North Scotland is the region with the second-highest electricity bills, with households forking out £795 a year on electricity Northern Ireland has the lowest electricity bills, paying 7% less on average per year than the rest of the UK.

Merseyside and North Wales have the highest electricity bills in the whole of the UK, new research can reveal.

READ MORE: BBC licence fee to be axed in 2027 - what this means for you

Electricity costs in Merseyside and North Wales, which saw a 7.5% hike in 2021 alone, are nearly £50 higher than the average yearly electric bills for the whole of the UK and a full £100 a year more expensive than bills in Northern Ireland.

Electricity bills in Merseyside and North Wales have increased nearly 30% since 2017.

The research, by energy experts Boiler Central, analysed new government data from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to discover which UK regions had the most expensive electricity in the UK.

In the past four years, the average UK electricity bill has jumped from £593 in 2017 to £765 in 2021.

A total of 40 energy suppliers went bust last year due to the spiralling wholesale gas costs, and Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert warns that energy the energy price cap will see another rise of 51% in April 2022, adding a further £600 to gas and electricity bills.

Myles Robinson, energy expert at Boiler Central said: “The explosion of electricity costs across the UK is reaching a crisis point.

"With bills predicted to skyrocket a further £600 in the spring, it is becoming more and more impossible for families to meet these costs.

"Not only are energy prices rising for the nation, but several areas of the UK are already dealing with the consequences of regional differences in electricity bills.

"Energy generation across the UK isn’t equally powerful – while some regions have richer sources of fossil fuels and renewable energy, some regions struggle to generate energy as well as the rest of the UK, which leads to higher costs, and consumers having to pay a higher proportion of their wage towards energy.

"While it’s important for consumers to do what they can to reduce their energy costs at home – including checking their properties are well insulated and seeing if there are quick fixes they can enact to reduce heat loss such as bleeding radiators, switching off lights, and looking into smart thermostats which make your energy use more cost-effective – unless the UK comes up with solutions on a larger scale to reduce the cost of energy, we are likely to see rising bills for some time".

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