Eon and Npower hike energy prices

By Matt Gibson

Eon and npower have become the latest energy firms to announce plans to raise their prices, according to reports.

The two companies intend to pass on higher wholesale gas and electricity prices to their customers by increasing tariffs by a steep margin, the Sunday Times claims.

The news comes days after it was announced that Scottish and Southern, the owners of Southern Electric, Swalec and Scottish Hydro, will raise their gas prices by an average of 18 per cent and electricity by 11 per cent from September 14.

Again, one of the reasons given for the increases was the higher cost of wholesale prices, as well as energy networks becoming more expensive to use and the rising cost of social and environmental schemes.

Scottish Power and British Gas were the first of the major suppliers to announce price rises of similar proportions and the higher cost of gas and electricity has led to calls for an investigation into the way energy prices are set for households and small businesses.