SSE Wants Move To 'National Pricing'

The chief executive of SSE, Alistair Phillips-Davies, has confirmed he has written to Ed Davey MP, calling for his department to consider moving to a "national pricing" on supplier costs.

The move comes after it was recently revealed that electricity suppliers are faced with different costs for transporting electricity in different parts of Britain.

SSE has now said that it would "make sense" for the costs to be "flattened out", leaving one standard charge for every customer across the country. The energy provider added that while any reforms require regulatory change, they would like this to happen as soon as possible.

In his letter, Mr Davies said: "I am aware that the reason for regional differences in retail electricity prices is due to different costs for transporting electricity in different parts of Great Britain.


"The companies operating networks in areas such as Northern Scotland and North Wales are always going to face larger costs per customer because these are large land masses with diverse terrain and remote housing.

"Indeed our own networks businesses experience this. The energy suppliers receive the charge from the network companies and pass it on to customers, which leads to overall regional price differences across all suppliers. Whilst some Government interventions narrow the scale of the differentials, as you know they do remain."

He continued: "Our position on this has been informed by public polling on this issue and the results are clear. Consistently two thirds of people support an end to regional price differentials and we have recently seen in the North of Scotland and the Islands that this is an issue of public concern.

"SSE has been making the case for these transportation costs to be 'flattened out' to one standard charge for every customer across Great Britain. The network companies would receive the same income for their necessary maintenance and investment work, but the costs would be spread across all regions, resulting in an end to this issue.

"This would make things far simpler for customers by reducing tariff complexity, as well as addressing these public concerns."

Mr Davies' letter has also been sent to Ofgem, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) energy market inquiry and the Shadow Secretary of State for the Labour Party on Energy and Climate Change, Caroline Flint.

(JP/MH)