Hundreds of thousands of London households were on Wednesday urged to claim their share of around £40 million in unused energy support vouchers.
Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps issued the appeal as the Government stepped up action to ensure people on pre-payment meters do not miss out on the money.
As of April 1, 2.1 million of the vouchers had been sent out in the capital, with more than 650,000 of them still yet to be used, worth around £44 million.
The vouchers are each worth around £66, and eligible households, mainly those on pre-payment meters, can claim six up until a June 30 deadline, so they are at risk of missing out on around £400.
Speaking directly to Londoners, given the city has the lowest take-up rate in Britain of just 68 per cent, Mr Shapps said: “Claim what you are owed. Still time to do it - but people do need to take action.”
Mr Shapps stressed that the low take-up rate in London of the energy support vouchers had been “causing concern” and that it may be down to factors such as people in urban areas moving more and the number of households in the city with English as a second language.
“We have gone over the top to try to make sure that in the face of Putin’s war and the increase in energy prices, we have been trying to ensure that people are getting plenty of support,” he explained.
“But if you use a pre-payment meter and you have not been taking that physical voucher, or voucher sent to you by text or email, to the Post Office or to PayPoint, then you may be about to lose potentially £400 so check that you have claimed and if you haven’t claim (to top-up your pre-payment account).”
The Government was working with community, welfare and energy poverty groups, and trying to reach people particularly in London with limited English, to encourage take-up.
People may not realise they can claim the money, the minister added, or emails may have gone to their spam folder, or they may have seen a text but forgotten about it.
In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Shapps also urged Londoners to inject new drive into Britain’s race to net zero by choosing a green energy tariff when new deals return to the energy market this summer.
The Net Zero Secretary stressed that individuals could themselves “encourage renewable energy to be produced” by opting for these green deals.
“There is no reason not to do it,” he told The Standard, emphasising that renewable energy tariffs could be “just as cheap, or even cheaper” than other offers.
Mr Shapps expects “proper competition” to return to the energy market within months after wholesale prices fell “very significantly”.
Last week, it emerged that households will be more than £400 a year better off on average from July after the cap on energy bills was slashed.
Energy regulator Ofgem set the cap at £2,074-a-year, down from £3,280 from April to July. That is well below the Government’s £2,500 Energy Price Guarantee.
Currently, most people are on their energy firm’s standard or default tariff but new fixed deals are expected to be offered soon.
Asked what Londoners could do for the Net Zero drive, Mr Shapps told The Standard: “Everyone in their own way has options on these things.
“For example, it’s often just as cheap, or even cheaper, to buy renewable energy.”
He continued: “People have not been able to shop around for this last year because we have had the price cap and the energy guarantee, essentially meaning we have all been paying the same pence per kilowatt for our electricity for example.
“That will start to change in the next three months or so because wholesale prices have dropped very significantly which means that we will start to get proper competition back into the energy market place.
“In the next few months, people will be able to shop around for their energy again, and look for better deals and whilst doing so you will often find...for example I signed up before Putin’s invasion..for a deal for renewable energy which is actually cheaper than one that isn’t.
“So there is no reason not to do it and you also know you are encouraging renewable energy to be produced in doing it.
“Easy thing to do, it doesn’t cost you anything, and there is great opportunity in the next few months because deals will start to be a thing that we will see in the energy market again.”
Pressed whether he would encourage people to opt for the renewable deals, he added: “With the energy contracts, look for the ones that are the best price, often they are the renewable ones, so it’s worth doing.”
More than half of Britain’s electricity last year was generated without using hydrocarbons, mainly from renewables, as well as some nuclear, Mr Shapps emphasised.
As the country increasingly decarbonises, he hailed London’s transport system as “on the whole pretty much the envy of the rest of the country”.
He added: “Often, when I go elsewhere in the world, people refer to the transport system in London as being something that they are trying to replicate.”
While the various forms of transport in the UK still needed to be “cleaned up”, including aviation, he stressed on the latter: “Actually, London leads the way. Heathrow serves up the most sustainable aviation fuel of any airport in the world.”
But he was highly critical of Sadiq Khan expanding the Ulez across the whole of London as part of efforts to improve the environment.
“I don’t think the way to do it is to brow beat people into it,” he said.
“I think the way that the Mayor has behaved with Ulez, recklessly bringing it right up to the borders, I’m just outside London, just outside the M25 in my Welwyn Hatfield constituency but if we are getting into a taxation without representation situation because of all the different congestion charges, Ulez charges, a “border tax” that he is thinking of, my voters don’t get a say in any of this.
“A lot of my constituents need to travel for work and if you are in a job where you need a van and you need to get it into London and now suddenly you are hit with these extra charges, it’s all well and good in 2030, 2035, but we are in 2023, and he is jumping the gun and making life a misery for people who live, particularly in outer London where the Ulez will be expanded, or outside of London where they get no say over this guy being elected and yet he is destroying their livelihoods which I think is wrong.”
Mr Khan defends the Ulez as key to cleaning up the capital’s toxic air and cutting the public health harms it does to Londoners.
