IT'S taken only a few days of the New Year for British Gas (BG) to regain a position it held with little challenge through 2006: one of the biggest threats to severely stretched household budgets across Britain. First, BG announced that customers who fail to pay bills within 28 days face a £5 fine after March 1. Then it was reprimanded and fined £5,000 by the regulator - for leaving customers on its Click Energy tariff holding on the line at a cost of 75p per minute when they rang with enquiries. Call centre staff apparently told customers they were paying 3p or 60p for the call, when neither figure was anywhere near correct. Both moves looked like big PR gaffes - at the start of a year generally expected to bring better news on fuel bills, with average household yearly gas and electricity bills tipped to fall more than £100. In 2006, average household bills for gas soared 42%, electricity bills by around 27%. But with new sources of supply coming on stream from Norwegian and Dutch fields, there is growing demand for falling wholesale gas prices of 2006 to be passed on - soon - to consumers. Says Tim Wolfenden, product strategy director at uSwitch.com, a leading switching and comparison service: "Although wholesale gas prices have fallen for 12 months, there is a time lag before these prices work through to household bills, partly because of the forward purchase of a wholesale commodity. "We hope to see price reductions around 10% by March. The longer cuts are delayed, the more questions will be asked." There are other storm clouds on the horizon. While BG - which retains 10 m gas customers - hints at price cuts by spring, many consumers may be forgetting they actually face big rises when their "capped" deals expire. When the penny drops, and bills jump another couple of hundred pounds, this week's furore could soon pale into insignificance. Simply Switch, another leading online and telephone price comparison service, reckons BG customers losing their Price Protection deal in April could see average energy bills leap from £754 per household to £1,148. Only this week, BG ended the price freeze on its Click Energy tariff - one of its most competitive - and lifted gas prices by 12.5% and electricity by 9.5%. At Powergen, calculates Simply Switch, average bills could jump from £763 to £1,011 when the cap expires in April. At Scottish Power, the cap which ended on December 31 could see annual bills leap from £617 to £1,021. Says Karen Darby, chief executive at Simply Switch: "Many households face much higher bills as capped and fixed price tariffs end - which means they will effectively be subjected to a delayed price increase. "When caps expire, customers automatically move to standard tariffs. Although companies notify them by letter of the change, many people paying by direct debit set up two or three years ago do nothing until the bills drop. "Now is the time these people should be looking for cheaper suppliers." | 
