The price of gas and electricity is determined by global wholesale prices, which shot up after supplies from Russia were cut as a response to the war in Ukraine – and after energy consumption increased again after COVID.
How much these wholesale energy prices are passed on to customers is controlled by the UK regulator Ofgem in the form of a price cap four times a year.
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This price cap limits the cost households pay per unit of energy (kilowatt hours) they use.
It means that from 1 October, instead of paying a maximum of 28p per kWh for electricity – people will now pay 34p.
And instead of paying a maximum of 7p per kWh for gas – they will now pay 10.3p.
Standing charges, which are the cost of connecting to the National Grid, are also going up with the price cap, but not by very much.
From now they will increase from 45p a day to 46p a day for electricity and 27p to 28p for gas.
Does the price cap cover everyone?
The price cap only covers domestic households in England, Wales and Scotland. The same level of support will be applied to the market in Northern Ireland.
Traditionally businesses are not covered by the price cap, but as part of a separate “energy bill relief” scheme, the government is providing additional support for firms.
You will be included in the price cap if you are a dual-fuel customer (use the same company for electricity and gas) on a standard variable tariff, who pays by direct debit, credit, or prepaid meter.
Standard variable tariffs mean your energy company can change the price per unit at any time – in line with global wholesale prices – but is limited by the price cap.
Fixed tariffs are agreed upon annually and mean the price per unit will not change for that year.
These are not included in the price cap, but the government says its energy price guarantee will mean a discount of 17p per kWh for electricity and 4.2p per kWh for gas.
They say this will bring fixed rates down to similar levels as the energy price cap.
If you are locked into an expensive fixed tariff, you can take a meter reading before 1 October to ensure your energy company honours the price guarantee discount.
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5:26
PM announces £2,500 average price cap
Price cap does not mean energy only costs £2,500 a year
The government estimates that the new price cap will result in average annual energy bills increasing from £1,971 to £2,500.
But that does not mean people won’t be charged more than £2,500 a year for their energy – it is just an estimate for a typical household.
According to Ofgem, a typical household in Britain has 2.4 people living in it – who use 242 kWh of electricity and 1,000 kWh of gas a month.
But all households are different – and their energy usage will depend on how many people live there, what time of day they use the most energy, and how energy efficient their home is.
For example, the government estimates that if you live in a purpose-built flat your average bill will be £1,750.
If you live in a mid-terraced house it will be around £2,350.
Those who live in semi-detached houses will pay around £2,650 a year.
And detached properties will pay roughly £3,300 annually.
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3:36
How to save on energy bills
What extra help is the government offering?
Before Liz Truss was appointed prime minister, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced all households would receive a £400 discount on their energy bills between October 2022 and March 2023.
From 1 October people will start to receive a £66 discount for October, another for November, and £67 for December, January, February and March.
Some energy companies are directly applying these to bills, while others will credit the amount to customers’ bank accounts.
Eight million households in receipt of certain benefits will also get £650 to help with their bills.
Pensioners will receive £300 and some people on special disability benefits will get £150.
People on low incomes and pensioners on pension guarantee credit will get £140 off through the Warm Home Discount.
Vulnerable families can also apply for extra help via their local council and their Household Support Fund.
The government’s energy bill relief scheme for England, Scotland and Wales will mean help with firms’ energy bills for six months from 1 October. A parallel scheme is operating in Northern Ireland.
Wholesale prices businesses pay for electricity will be capped at 21.1p per kWh for electricity and 7.5p per kWh for gas.
This will be applied automatically to companies using variable tariffs.
For those on fixed price contracts, the same discounts will be applied if the agreement started after 1 April 2022.
The savings will appear on bills in November and will be backdated to October.
A review will be published at the end of the year which will help identify “vulnerable” businesses that need support beyond March 2023.
In a workshop in the far corner of the Styal prison estate, glass, plastic and metal are being smashed to the beat of pumping music.
Women at workstations are dismantling electronics with the energy of gym enthusiasts.
TVs and laptops, discarded at local recycling centres across England, have ended up here, on the edge of Wilmslow, Cheshire.
But amid the whiz of drills, the crunch of screens being separated from their plastic casings and the clatter of electronic boards ripped out and chucked in big bins, something else is being recycled – women’s lives.
“You get a lot of frustration out, because obviously a lot of girls have got a lot of anger, you know,” says Joanne*, who is serving time for drug offences.
She has joined this activity not for the £10 per 70 TVs she breaks apart, but because the programme – called Recycling Lives – could give her the skills and the support to keep her out of jail in the future.
Only 12% of women are employed six months after leaving prison, compared to 25% of men. In the general population employment levels between men and women are 78% to 72%.
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Ex-prisoners with a job are far less likely to re-offend. So, women prisoners are at a disadvantage. Often a man is connected to the crime they committed.
“For 90% of the women in prison, there’s always a male involved in why they’ve committed crime, it is the case with me as well,” says Joanne, who tells me she was pressured into dealing drugs by her partner.
Official Ministry of Justice statistics say that at least 60% of women in prison are victims of domestic violence and most will have experienced some form of abuse as a child.
Many, too, are mothers and they feel the guilt of separation every day. Joanne says of her son: “It’s my sister picking him up from school, not me.
“It’s my sister there on Christmas day, not me. Birthdays, all the special occasions. It’s heart-breaking.
“People think prison is easy. You are ripped away from your family and your children. It’s not easy.”
As if in illustration, the glass cracks on an iPad, as she peels it away with her screwdriver.
Official figures say there are around 3,500 women in prison and it is estimated that about half are mothers.
‘I’m trying to give them a future’
The workshop manager Yvonne Grime knows this all too well. A former serial offender herself, she’s the first former inmate at Styal to now hold a set of keys to the prison.
“The biggest thing for me [as a prisoner] was leaving my children,” she says, “and I still carry that guilt round, but I have come through it.”
Part of her redemption is to help the women in her workshop. The Recycling Lives programme transformed her life, and she wants to give back.
She says: “I’m trying to give them a future. I’m trying to give you some hope that they can that they can change.
“Get the children back, find a job, find a home. There is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Her work is part manager and part mentor. “When I first started, I thought I’m just going to come in and run this workshop,” she said.
“I didn’t realise I had to be their mum, their dad, their brother, their sister, the doctor, the nurse, the everything that comes with it.
“If I had a salary for every one of those professions, I’d be absolutely minted.”
Styal isn’t what you expect a prison to look like.
Inside the high fences and barbed wire are sixteen austere red-brick Victorian houses.
Once an orphanage, they’re now the prison’s accommodation blocks.
Ted the prison cat, wanders from block to block, and has already served several of his nine lives in the compound.
Along with recycling TV sets, women can learn to guide and drive forklift trucks.
They are quick with their tools, spinning through one appliance after another with remarkable and methodical destructive pace.
But the real advantage of the programme is that it continues on the outside. Only 6% of people who go through Recycling Lives go on to commit further crime. The general reoffending rate is 25%.
In a warehouse in Preston, former inmates are involved in recycling food from supermarkets and farms, then sent to foodbanks.
Here we meet Naomi Winter, who – three years since being released from jail – is now a manager at the food distribution depot.
The hardest thing about prison for her too was being separated from a child.
“I was put in prison when my baby is only three months old,” she said.
“So, it was like losing an arm, like losing a piece of my DNA.
“I still woke up for night feeds in the night and stuff like that.”
She says there wasn’t the mental health provision inside of prison to help her deal with post-natal depression, and she spent way too much time alone with her thoughts.
She was in and out of prison for drug offences and violence eight times by the age of 30 and first jailed aged 15, for breaching an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO).
She feels even short prison sentences can ruin lives, and says: “You take women who’s robbed a block of cheese to feed the child.
“They put them in prison for 28 days. They take the home, take the kids, they lose the family, and they get out with nothing. You just create a criminal right there.
“You’ve just created a woman who’s got nothing to lose. You’re also releasing them with a sleeping bag in a tent and telling them to go and sleep in the woods.”
Alternatives to custody
The government recognises that prison isn’t working for many of the women who end up there.
It’s why, with women being mostly non-violent offenders and serving short sentences, the government is setting up a Women’s Justice Board to look at reducing the number who go into prison with alternatives such as community sentences and intervention projects tackling the root causes of re-offending.
The Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told Sky News: “For many women, prison isn’t working. Most women in prisons are victims themselves. Over half are mothers, with a prison sentence separating parent and child.
“That’s why I am establishing a new Women’s Justice Board, tasked with reducing the number of women in prison by exploring alternatives to custody for female offenders.”
Chief Executive of Recycling Lives, Alasdair Jackson says: “There are certain things we all need as human beings: One is a place to live, one is a job to be able to pay for that place to live and then a support network.
“But there are a lot more factors that women have to contend with; there’s children, there is maybe domestic abuse, there’s everything that goes on around that, but when you give people a chance, when you give people the skills that they need, it is life-changing.
“And when you change a woman’s life, you are often changing the family’s life and the children’s life.”
Prison is supposed to be part punishment, part repair job. But there are limited programmes like Recycling Lives, and for many women entering jail currently, the only recycling is back into criminality.
The world’s oldest man has died at the age of 112, the Guinness World Records has announced.
John Tinniswood was born in Liverpool on 26 August 1912, the year the Titanic sank. He was a lifelong Liverpool FC fan, born just 20 years after the club was founded.
He died on Monday at a care home in Southport, Guinness World Records said.
In a statement, his family said: “His last day was surrounded by music and love.
“John always liked to say thank you. So on his behalf, thanks to all those who cared for him over the years, including his carers at the Hollies Care Home, his GPs, district nurses, occupational therapist and other NHS staff.”
In April 2024, aged 111, he became the world’s oldest living man, following the death of 114-year-old Juan Vicente Perez from Venezuela.
Mr Tinniswood’s key advice for staying healthy was to practice moderation. “If you drink too much or you eat too much or you walk too much; if you do too much of anything, you’re going to suffer eventually.”
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But when asked the secret to his longevity after turning 112 in August, Mr Tinniswood put it all down to “just luck”.
“I can’t think of any special secrets I have,” he said. “I was quite active as a youngster, I did a lot of walking.
“Whether that had something to do with it, I don’t know. But to me, I’m no different [to anyone]. No different at all.
“I just take it in my stride like anything else, why I’ve lived that long I have no idea at all.”
Apart from a portion of battered fish and chips every Friday, Mr Tinniswood did not follow any particular diet, and said earlier this year he felt “no different” turning 112.
“I don’t feel that age, I don’t get excited over it. That’s probably why I’ve reached it.
“I just take it in my stride like anything else, why I’ve lived that long I have no idea at all.”
He lived through both world wars and was a Second World War veteran – having worked in an administrative role for the Army Pay Corps.
In addition to accounts and auditing, his work involved logistical tasks such as locating stranded soldiers and organising food supplies. He went on to work as an accountant for Shell and BP before retiring in 1972.
He met his wife, Blodwen, at a dance in Liverpool. They were together for 44 years before Blodwen died in 1986.
Mr Tinniswood is survived by his daughter Susan, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and lived to be the fourth-oldest British man in recorded history.
His family added: “John had many fine qualities. He was intelligent, decisive, brave, calm in any crisis, talented at maths and a great conversationalist.
“John moved to the Hollies rest home just before his 100th birthday and his kindness and enthusiasm for life were an inspiration to the care home staff and his fellow residents.”
The oldest ever man was Jiroemon Kimura from Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years 54 days and died in 2013.
The world’s oldest living woman, and oldest living person, is Japan’s 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka.