Our view was very clear, that signing a 36-month contract was absolutely not in their best interest, and we strongly advised against signing this, which they agreed with.
Our initial advice was to stay on out of contract rates for the first several months. Indeed, the out of contract rates were lower than the fixed rates on offer at the time.
Once the suppliers had amended their out of contract rates, it coincided with the government implementing their Energy Bill Relief Scheme (EBRS). As such, we advised the client to sign a 6-month supply contract between Oct 22 and March 23, maximising the benefit of the EBRS support.
Once the market had started to settle early 2023, we ran a whole of market tender and sourced a 12-month contract to provide a bit more longer-term security of price, without committing while the markets were still very high.
The results
- Not signing the 36 month offer from the previous broker saved this client an estimated £1.3m.
- Staying out of contract for 2 months rather than signing another contract saved the client £56.3k.