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Written question asked by Pamela Nash (Labour) on Tuesday, 3 March 2015, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 6 March 2015 (named day). It was answered by Matt Hancock (Conservative) on Friday, 6 March 2015 on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Energy: Meters

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how many and what proportion of (a) electricity and (b) gas energy customers in (i) the UK, (ii) Scotland, (iii) England, (iv) Wales and (v) Northern Ireland used home prepayment meters in each year from May 2010 up to the most recent period for which records are available.

Answer

Data on methods of payment for domestic energy consumers are published in Quarterly Energy Prices, tables 2.4.2 and 2.5.2.

This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/quarterly-domestic-energy-price-stastics .

The tables below show the proportion of customers on pre-payment for each year since 2010. Data is only available at the Public Electricity Supply (PES) region level of geography. As Merseyside and North Wales is a PES region we cannot separately calculate totals for England and Wales. Gas is not yet widely available in Northern Ireland; therefore this data has been excluded from the gas table.

Percentage of electricity customers with pre-payment meters

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014p

UK

15

15

16

16

17

Scotland

19

19

19

19

21

England and Wales

14

14

15

15

16

Northern Ireland

33

36

37

36

36

Percentage of gas customers with pre-payment meters

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014p

GB

13

13

14

15

15

Scotland

13

14

16

17

18

England and Wales

12

13

14

14

15

Data for 2014 is provisional as Q4 2014 data is not yet available, so percentages published are based on data from the first three quarters of the year.

DECC estimate that there are just over 27 million households in the UK that consume electricity, based on meter point counts, suggesting that in 2014 there were around 4½ million households using pre-payment meters.

DECC estimate that there are just over 23 million households in Great Britain that consume gas, based on meter point counts. This suggests that in 2014 there were around 3½ million households using pre-payment meters.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
226043
Session
2014-15
Subjects
Energy Meters
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk