The Energy Bills Support Scheme gave every UK household with a domestic electricity connection £400 off its bills over winter 2022-23. It started life as a £200 discount households would have repaid. The Office for Budget Responsibility put its final cost at £12.0 billion. It was one of eight support schemes, and the National Audit Office reported in November 2024 that all eight had closed for payments.
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From a loan to a grant
Energy bills climbed fast. The price cap rose 54% in April 2022, and wholesale prices jumped again after Russia invaded Ukraine. The National Audit Office says the average household bill for gas and electricity stood at £1,277 in winter 2021-22. By early 2023 it had passed £4,000.
On February 3, 2022, the Chancellor announced an up-front £200 discount on electricity bills for every household in Great Britain. Customers were to pay it back through their bills in later years. On April 1 the government renamed it the Energy Bills Support Scheme. Then, on May 26, the Chancellor doubled it to £400 and made it a grant that nobody had to repay.
How the money arrived
Nobody had to apply. Suppliers credited the grant to households over six months from October 2022. Direct debit and credit customers saw it as a credit on their account.
Northern Ireland did it differently, because energy policy there is almost entirely devolved. Households there got a single £600 payment, combining the £400 scheme with a £200 Alternative Fuel Payment. The Utility Regulator says direct debit customers got it straight into their bank accounts. Other customers received a Post Office voucher, and all vouchers were due out by February 28, 2023.
What it cost
The price tag kept moving. In March 2022 the Office for Budget Responsibility costed the £200 version at £6.0 billion. Doubling the grant added another £6.0 billion, taking the scheme to £12.0 billion.
It was not the largest measure. The Energy Price Guarantee, announced in September 2022, capped a typical household’s annual bill at £2,500 from October. The OBR first expected that cap to cost £24.8 billion in 2022-23, then revised it to £23.0 billion. Across every energy support policy, the net cost in 2022-23 came to £51.1 billion, or 2.0% of GDP.
What came after
The Energy Price Guarantee outlasted the grant. The Commons Library dates the cap from October 1, 2022 to March 31, 2024. The National Audit Office put the cost of the schemes introduced during 2022 and 2023 at an estimated £44 billion.
The watchdog credited the support with protecting most consumers at low levels of fraud and error. It also warned that some universal payments may have reached people who did not need them. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is considering how it would help consumers if prices spiked again. The NAO found that work at an early stage, with no clear plan for what the department would do in practice.
