Price – a hot topic

S ROBB (Letters, 15 April) writes that the cost of electricity is ­predicted to rise to 19.8p per kWh in the next seven years, which he says is almost double the present price. He is one of the lucky ones!

In the former Scottish Hydro Board area (north of a line from Campbeltown to Dundee which skirts round the north of
Glasgow), all consumers are 
paying around 20 per cent more than the rest of the country in transmission charges because of the way the industry is now
organised.

Thus SSE customers in more than 50 per cent of Scotland are already paying 18.5p for standard electricity units. In the south of Scotland, I understand the single rate unit can be as low as 12.45p. It varies on whether you are on an economy or a general domestic tariff.

Action by Ofgem to correct this anomaly is long overdue. It is so ironic that the coldest and windiest part of Great Britain is having to pay so much more.

In the south of England heating will be switched off by April (this year being an exception) and not be put on again until November. In the north of Scotland, we are lucky if we can switch off before the end of May and it often has to go back on again at the end of August.

The economic damage suffered by this pricing regime in a large part of Scotland is ­immense.

The government’s fuel rebate scheme for the islands has been most welcome, but this ­little-known electricity time bomb is hitting domestic and business consumers even more severely than the motoring one.

Please will MPs and MSPs ensure that Ofgem takes steps to reduce electricity prices in the north to a more equitable level?

R J Ardern

Inverness