What is a standing charge?

The charge is small per day, which is why people miss it. Over a year it stacks up. At 57.19p a day for electricity and 29.04p a day for gas, a dual-fuel home pays around £315 a year before using a single unit of energy. That’s roughly £26 a month you can’t cut by turning off lights or turning the heating down.

The standing charge pays for the parts of the system that cost money whether or not you use energy: keeping your home connected to the grid, maintaining the cables, substations and gas pipes in your area, and reading and running your meter.

It also carries costs that used to sit elsewhere, including a share of government schemes and the bill for suppliers that collapsed during the 2021–22 energy crisis, spread across everyone still paying.

Two things move the standing charge: where you live and who supplies you. Ofgem sets a separate price cap for each of the 14 energy regions, so the electricity standing charge varies by area. The lowest regions sit well below the national average and the highest sit above it.

Your supplier can charge less than the cap, though most sit close to it. Prepayment and standard-credit meters carry different rates again.

A few suppliers offer tariffs with no standing charge. They make the money back with a higher unit rate, so you pay more for each unit you use. These only work out cheaper if you use very little energy: a one or two-bed flat under about 3,500 kWh a year, a second home, or a place left empty for weeks at a time.

For a normal household on average usage, a no-standing-charge tariff usually costs more over the year, not less. Work out your own numbers before you move to one.

The standing charge sits near the top of the charges section, shown as a daily rate and a number of days. It’s listed separately for gas and electricity. Some suppliers label it “standing charge”, others call it “daily charge” or “fixed daily charge”.