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The reduction in the Ofgem price cap that will apply from April may be the final step on the long, ruinously expensive road to a new normal for consumer energy prices. 

The guide price for typical annual dual-tariff use of £1,690 – a fall of 12.3% from the previous cap – is a dramatic reduction from the peak of more than £4,000 that applied just a year ago and prompted multi-billion pound state support for every household in the country.

After bouncing between £1,800 and just shy of £2,000 in the three quarters since last June, this reduction, taken with projections of a further drop to around £1,500 in three months, could represent the floor for post-Ukraine invasion prices.

To be clear, a price that’s still considerably higher than the £993 we expected to pay in the winter of 2020-21 represents a dramatic, material and permanent increase in the cost of living, and a return to that level is unlikely as long as Russia is a global pariah at war.

Energy markets may look becalmed but volatility is in their nature.

Read more:
What is the price cap – and how will it affect my bills?

Energy price volatility temporarily subsides

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A warm, wet winter helped UK domestic gas demand fall 16% in 2023 compared to the pre-war average, but the weather has flattered UK energy security.

Much of the flow of gas from Russia has been replaced by liquid natural gas from Australia, the US and Qatar, and pipelines from Norway, all ostensibly friendlier nations, but the UK remains exposed to the kindness of strangers to heat homes and fire power stations.

The long-term answer is low-carbon and renewable energy sources, but while Vladimir Putin has provided the clearest motivation yet to accelerate, the transition has become significantly more expensive than anticipated.

The offshore wind industry in particular has had a brutal year with supply chain resources finite and finance, like power, no longer cheap.

For consumers, however, this lull may signal the return of a functioning competitive market among suppliers.

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine the Ofgem figure has been a cap in name only.

In practice, it’s been a universally applied maximum charge, with the taxpayer picking up the balance of every pound over £2,500.

Lower wholesale prices, helped by the caprice of a mild winter, mean suppliers may have to work a little harder for your custom.

British Gas is already offering a fixed price guaranteed at £1 below the April price cap, while E.On is offering a 3% discount on the cap for a year.

Not much compared to the wild (and entirely unsustainable market) that existed before the war, but it is a start.

More than billpayers welcoming the fall

The reduction will be welcome at the Treasury too. Having set the precedent of paying our energy bills and allowing the national debt to balloon close to 100% of GDP in the process, there is no appetite to return to feeding the national meter.

With the cap now around half the more than £3,100 that applied in April last year there will be downward pressure on inflation too, though don’t expect the Bank of England to rush to cut rates as a consequence.

The biggest annual reduction in bills was factored into the figures for last October, helping drag CPI down from its 11% peak, and the Bank of England is already looking ahead to when the gravitational pull of energy prices falls out of the figures and secondary factors start to drive the headline rate.

There may also now be space for Ofgem and ministers, election permitting, to examine some of the remaining obvious flaws in the domestic market.

Electricity remains almost four times more expensive per unit than gas thanks to green taxes, despite gas being the fuel we need to remove from the network if net zero and energy security are genuine goals.

If the government is serious about incentivising the decarbonisation of home heating with heat pumps – an open question – these running costs will have to be addressed alongside installation grants.

And standing charges remain a regressive charge for billpayers, with electricity costing more than £3.50 a week before you have turned a light on, though the new cap makes that a slightly less terrifying prospect than a year ago.

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Bank of England job fears as Andrew Bailey warns of tough choices

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Bank of England job fears as Andrew Bailey warns of tough choices

Staff at the Bank of England are on alert for potential job cuts in Threadneedle Street after the governor, Andrew Bailey, warned of tough decisions about the institution’s future cost base.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Bailey informed Bank of England employees in a memo last week that it was taking a detailed look at costs, although it did not specifically refer to the prospect of redundancies.

One source said the memo had been sent while Mr Bailey was attending the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington.

Its precise wording was unclear on Monday, but one source said it had warned of “tough choices” that would need to be made as the bank accelerated its investment in new technology.

They added that managers had been briefed to expect to have to make savings of between 6% and 8% of their operating budgets.

The Bank of England employed 5,810 people at the end of February, of whom just over 5,000 were full-time, according to its annual report.

Those numbers were marginally higher than in the previous year.

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The central bank’s budget, funded through a levy, is expected to be £596m in the current financial year.

The workforce figures include the Prudential Regulation Authority, Britain’s main banking regulator, which is set to get a new boss next year when Sam Woods steps down after two terms in the role.

A Bank of England spokesperson declined to comment on the contents of Mr Bailey’s memo.

They also declined to provide details of the timing of any previous rounds of redundancies at the bank.

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Pizza Hut to shut 68 restaurants in UK after company behind venues falls into administration

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Pizza Hut to shut 68 restaurants in UK after company behind venues falls into administration

Pizza Hut is to close 68 restaurants and 11 delivery sites with the loss of more than 1,200 jobs after the company behind its UK venues fell into administration.

The company has said 1,210 workers are being made redundant as part of the closures.

DC London Pie, the firm running Pizza Hut’s restaurants in the UK, appointed administrators from corporate finance firm FTI on Monday.

It comes less than a year after the business bought the chain’s restaurants from insolvency.

On Monday, American hospitality giant Yum! Brands, which owns the global Pizza Hut business, said it had bought the UK restaurant operation in a pre-pack administration deal – a rescue deal that will save 64 sites and secure the future of 1,276 workers.

A spokesperson for Pizza Hut UK confirmed the Yum! deal and said as a result it was “pleased to secure the continuation of 64 sites to safeguard our guest experience and protect the associated jobs.

“Approximately 2,259 team members will transfer to the new Yum! equity business under UK TUPE legislation, including above-restaurant leaders and support teams.”

Nicolas Burquier, Managing Director of Pizza Hut Europe and Canada, called Monday’s agreement a “targeted acquisition” which, he said, “aims to safeguard our guest experience and protect jobs where possible.

“Our immediate priority is operational continuity at the acquired locations and supporting colleagues through the transition.”

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The administration comes around six weeks after a subsidiary of Yum! filed a winding up petition against DC London Pie.

DC London Pie was the company formed after Directional Capital, which operated franchises in Sweden and Denmark, snapped up 139 UK restaurants from the previous UK franchisee Heart with Smart Limited in January of this year.

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Oil and gas workers offered cash to retrain, in major plan for future clean energy workforce

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Oil and gas workers offered cash to retrain, in major plan for future clean energy workforce

Ministers have unveiled their flagship plan to train and recruit workers for the booming clean energy sector, which it is hoping to supercharge in the next five years.

Up to £18m of new money has been pledged by the UK and Scottish governments specifically to move those working in the oil and gas sector into new roles.

Their jobs are about to fall off a cliff as the industry declines, with at least 40,000 of the current 115,000 jobs forecast to disappear by the early 2030s.

Almost all of those roles are thought to be fairly easily transferable into green industries – requiring little more than a few months of extra training.

But in the absence of government help, workers have been moving abroad, industry says, taking with them the expertise Britain badly needs to for its new greener energy system.

And it has left them feeling forgotten about after years of working to keep the lights on, and increasingly swayed by Reform UK, both GMB and Unite unions have warned Labour.

Pledge to double green jobs by 2030

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Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News that creating jobs in sectors like carbon capture and storage and hydrogen would help “create a future for those in the North Sea communities”.

The new £18m will pay for careers advice, training, and “skills passports” to enable oil and gas workers to make the switch without having to repeat qualifications.

The cash was announced on Sunday in the new Clean Energy Jobs Plan, which details how the government hopes to make good on its promise to double green jobs by 2030.

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Renewables overtake coal for first time

Mr Miliband said in an interview: “This plan shows 400,000 extra jobs in the clean energy economy by 2030.

“This isn’t a target. This is actually what we believe is necessary to meet all the plans we have across the economy.”

The first strategy of its kind hopes to plug the UK’s massive skills gap that threatens to derail the government’s target to green the electricity system by 2030.

It identifies 31 priority occupations that are particularly in demand, such as plumbers, electricians and welders, and lists a target to convert five colleges into new “Technical Excellence Colleges” to train workers.

‘You can’t train people for jobs that aren’t there’

Unions welcomed the plan, but pointed out that skills and training do not equate to new jobs.

They say it will mean nothing without extra money and a revitalised domestic supply chain to build all the green technology needed, from fibreglass wind turbines to aluminium sub-sea cables.

Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary who has threatened to cut ties with Labour over its policy to end North Sea oil and gas drilling and watering down of a ban on zero-hours contracts, welcomed the “initial steps” but called for “an equally ambitious programme of public investment”.

Professor Paul de Leeuw from the Energy Transition Institute in Aberdeen said the plan was “genuinely new and different”, and had for the first time joined up relevant information and strategies in one place.

But “you can’t train people for jobs that aren’t there”, he added, also calling for an investment plan.f

Reform heartlands could benefit from Labour’s jobs plan

The boom in clean energy jobs stands to benefit Reform heartlands along the east coast of Britain.

That fact is more by luck than design, given the east coast’s proximity to offshore wind farms and carbon capture and storage fields in the North Sea.

Reform promises a radically different vision for the country’s future, based on reopening coal mines and maxing out nuclear power and what’s left of North Sea oil and gas to boost jobs and the economy.

Its deputy leader, Richard Tice, objects to land being used for solar panels and pylons.

Government modelling forecasts an additional 35,000 direct jobs in Scotland, 55,000 in the East of England and 50,000 in the North West.

To keep the unions sweet, the government will also have to follow through on its pledge to boost the rights of those working offshore in green energy.

A current loophole gives protections like the minimum wage to oil and gas workers in UK territorial seas, but not to workers in the clean energy sector.

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