October 2025 Price Cap
Ofgem recently announced that the price cap would increase by 2% from the 1st October. The price cap is a national average that dictates the highest price that an energy supplier can charge to its customers. This price varies slightly by region and payment method.
This price cap increase will see the average annual bill rise to £1755/year from the current £1720/year. Actual energy bills will vary depending on usage, but this gives an idea of how much someone could expect to spend on the new rates. Although it isn’t a huge increase, many of the annual bill cost comes in the winter as usage increases due to the cold weather, so expect your monthly bills to look much higher than the last couple of months regardless of the price cap change.
Unfortunately, this rate is also higher than it was in October 2024, when the average annual bill was £1717, so your bills could be more than they were this time last year.
Below lays out the price cap changes for The Midlands depending on payment type.
Direct debit
People on direct debit will see their electric standing charge capped at 53p and their gas standing charge capped at 34.05p. This means that a household that has both gas and electric, will pay 87.52p per day from 1st October, which is over 6.5p more per day than the current price cap.
As well as this, the unit rate for electric will increase by 0.5p (to 25.64p), whilst the gas unit rate will actually decrease by 0.07p (to 6.21p) which is a small but welcome change for people turning on their gas central heating.
Pre-payment meter
People on pre-payment meter have their standing charge rates capped at the same amount as direct debit customers, so 53p for electric and 34.05p for gas. This means that a household that has both gas and electric, will pay 87.52p per day from 1st October, which is over 6.5p more per day than the current price cap.
People on pre-payment meter, which still currently has the lowest unit rates, will see the cap for their electric unit rate increase to 24.86p (from 24.34p) and the gas unit rate drop to 5.97p (currently 6.02p).
On receipt of bill
On receipt of bill, also known as standard credit, remains the most expensive method of payment. The standing charge has risen to 61.07p for electricity and 41.76p per day for gas. This, unfortunately, means that dual-fuel households will cross the pound-a-day line and be paying 102.83p instead of 96.22p on the current rate. Over the next 3-month period (before the price cap changes again on 1st January), this will see on receipt of bill households paying a total of over £14 more on their standing charge than direct debit customers.
The unit rate is also highest for customers paying on receipt of bill. The capped unit rate for electricity will increase to 27.05p (currently 26.55p), whilst the gas unit rate follows the same trend as the other payment methods and will decrease slightly to 6.54p (to 6.62p). Although these changes are in line with other payment methods, the electric unit rate is still 1.41p more than for direct debit customers and over 2p more than customers on a pre-payment meter.
