£7bn in unpaid bills.
MPs want standing charges reviewed.
The Public Accounts Committee published its report on water, energy and broadband regulation on 11 September. Over £7bn is owed to energy and water companies. Millions of eligible households are missing support. And standing charges get named as a major source of dissatisfaction.
📋 What the MPs found
More than £7bn owed to energy and water firms as of March 2025. 3.8 million households missing water bill support they qualify for. 7.5 million missing broadband social tariffs.
Support schemes exist. People do not know they exist, or cannot navigate them. The committee calls it a failure of the regulators, not the customers.
🔧 What they want changed
A tell us once system for vulnerable customers across all three sectors. Plain language communications within six months. A central debt register within a year.
A government review of standing charges. You currently pay 54.83p a day for electricity and 29.68p for gas before you use a single unit. That is about £308 a year for having a meter.
Martin Lewis called it a great start. He also said more can be done, which is his polite way of saying it is not enough.
🏠 Why standing charges matter to flexibility
A standing charge is the one part of the bill you cannot shift, shave or time. It punishes low users and rewards nobody.
Some suppliers now trial low standing charge tariffs with higher unit rates. For a low user that saves around £150 a year. For a household that can move usage to cheap hours it saves more.
The more of your bill that depends on when you use power, the more the grid can pay you to help. That is the direction of travel, if the review happens.
Seven billion pounds of debt and a daily charge for existing. MPs have noticed. Whether anything changes depends on a review that has not been ordered yet. In the meantime the unit rate is the part of the bill that responds to what you do.