Ofgem announced this week that the energy price cap will fall by 7% from 1 April 2026, saving the average household around 117 a year - about 10 a month. The media is calling it good news. The government is claiming credit. But look at the small print, and the picture is considerably less rosy than the headlines suggest.
Relief That Comes With a Catch
Yes, bills are coming down. After months of eye-watering energy costs, any reduction is welcome. But the average household is still paying 1,641 a year for gas and electricity - more than double what it was before the energy crisis began. We haven't returned to normal. We've just moved from catastrophic to merely very expensive.
And the relief may be short-lived. Forecasters are already warning that rising global gas prices could push the cap back up by around 10% in July. So households who are breathing a sigh of relief this spring could be hit with another increase in summer. That is not energy security. That is a rollercoaster that is making household budgeting impossible.
Network Costs Are Going Up
While the headline cap has fallen, network costs - the cost of maintaining and upgrading the grid - have increased by 66 a year per household. This is because of the RIIO-3 price control framework, which funds infrastructure upgrades. In plain English: even as the unit price of energy falls slightly, the standing charges and network fees are going up. The energy companies and the grid operators are still taking their cut.
British households have been asked to subsidise an energy transition that has been mismanaged from the start. The dash for renewables, driven by net zero commitments, has made the UK more dependent on intermittent power sources without building the storage and backup capacity needed to make that work reliably. When the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, we turn to gas - and we pay whatever the market demands.
Labour Is Claiming Credit for Something It Didn't Achieve
The government has been quick to welcome the April price cap reduction. But this fall has nothing to do with Labour energy policy. It is a function of global wholesale gas markets that have eased slightly from their peak. The government controls neither the weather nor the global gas price. What it does control is the regulatory framework, the planning system for new energy infrastructure, and the decisions about which technologies to invest in - and on those fronts, the record is poor.
Planning permission for new gas power stations remains painfully slow. The government continues to block new North Sea oil and gas licences, keeping us dependent on imported energy rather than our own reserves. Net zero targets are being pursued without a credible plan for how we get from here to there without causing energy poverty along the way.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would scrap the net zero target in its current form and replace it with a genuine energy security strategy. We would fast-track North Sea licences to reduce our dependence on imported gas. We would build new gas power stations to provide reliable baseload power while nuclear capacity is expanded. We would strip out the green levies that have added hundreds of pounds to household bills for years. And we would reform the standing charge system so that it stops hammering households who try to reduce their consumption.
British people deserve reliable, affordable energy. Not a 7% reduction that might be reversed in three months. A proper plan. A long-term strategy. Something this government is not equipped to deliver.