{"id":80326,"date":"2017-04-01T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T09:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=e66ee5055fca199ceb6e462fd37eaf11"},"modified":"2017-04-01T09:00:02","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T09:00:02","slug":"news-story-pre-payment-meter-price-cap-comes-into-effect-to-protect-millions-of-consumers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=80326","title":{"rendered":"News story: Pre-payment meter price cap comes into effect to protect millions of consumers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Last June, following a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/cma-publishes-final-energy-market-reforms\">two-year investigation<\/a> into the energy market, the Competition and Markets Authority (<abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>) decided to put in place a temporary price cap to protect some of the most vulnerable households in Britain.<\/p>\n<p>The temporary cap is expected to reduce bills across Britain and will save the average household \u00a380 a year.<br \/>\nThe <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> found that people using pre-payment meters had less choice and were paying disproportionately higher bills than customers paying by other means \u2013 including direct debit.<\/p>\n<p>The price cap will remain in place until the end of 2020 when the smart meter roll-out \u2013 combined with other changes imposed on the industry by the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> \u2013 is expected to tackle issues that prevent such customers accessing the better deals available to others.<\/p>\n<p>Andrea Coscelli, Acting Chief Executive of the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Households across the UK deserve to get a fair deal on their energy bills.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last-child\">On top of a number of measures to get competition working better, the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>\u2019s pre-payment meter price cap means that more than 4 million consumers, many of whom are vulnerable, and who can\u2019t easily shop around for a better deal, will see their bills cut by around \u00a380 a year each, saving British customers a total of \u00a3320 million per year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the CMA\u2019s price cap on pre-payment meters has come into force to the benefit of around 4 million households.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}