Centrica, owner of British Gas, plans to cut 1,300 jobs (800 new, 500 confirmed) from call centres and back office over two years, citing changing customer behaviour towards digital channels. This comes as retail profits rose despite falling customer numbers and an expected £112m compensation payout.
Centrica, owner of British Gas, will cut 1,300 call centre jobs over two years, citing a 20% reduction in customer calls and a preference for digital channels. CEO Chris O'Shea stated AI isn't the main driver, but the company is deploying AI tools. This comes as retail profits rose despite customer losses.
British Gas will pay up to £112m in compensation and debt write-offs for forcibly installing prepayment meters in thousands of homes during the 2022 energy crisis, following an Ofgem investigation.
British Gas agrees to £20m redress fund and up to £112m in total compensation for forcibly fitting prepayment meters in vulnerable customers' homes without consent, following an Ofgem investigation.
British Gas to pay £20m for breaching licence conditions by forcibly installing prepayment meters in vulnerable customers' homes, with up to £70m in energy debt written off.
British Gas will pay up to £112m in compensation and debt write-offs after Ofgem found it forced prepayment meters on vulnerable customers during the Russian gas crisis.
British Gas agrees to pay £20m into a redress fund and write off up to £70m of vulnerable customers' debt after Ofgem investigation into forced prepayment meter installations by debt agents.
British Gas agrees to £20m redress fund and up to £70m debt write-off after Ofgem investigation into unauthorized prepayment meter installations in vulnerable customers' homes.
There will still be a need to have gas in the wings to keep the lights on, so the financials stack up on Severn plant purchaseThe eye-catching non-Hormuz news in energy-land last month was that Great Britain is set for a record-breaking summer for wind and solar power generation. The national energy system operator even thought there could be periods – a sunny weekend or a bank holiday afternoon of low demand, for example – when more renewable power would be available than the electricity grid needed.So, on the face of it, it is an odd moment for Centrica, owner of British Gas, to fork out £370m to buy a 16-year-old combined-cycle gas turbine plant in south Wales. After all, the government’s clean power plan imagines that, come 2030, Great Britain’s entire fleet of gas plants will be used to generate only 5% of its electricity, down from 31.5% in 2025. Continue reading...
The Tell Sid campaign promised to make the working man rich, but in reality the selling of public assets made us all poorerIn the summer of 1987, as life in Britain was being steadily reshaped by Margaret Thatcher, I landed a temporary job as an electrician’s mate in a steel-drum factory. I was a truly useless assistant, and justified my existence by singing songs to entertain my boss as he worked. As I recall, by the time I left Stuart had come round to quite liking Bob Dylan, but still had no time for the gothic gloominess of the early Cure.While I handed him tools he didn’t need, and failed to locate the ones he did, we occasionally talked about politics. Stuart was a gentle man in his mid-20s, already married and hoping to buy a house. He was also, it turned out, a cautious believer in Thatcher’s promise of a “people’s capitalism” in which working people would get a piece of the action. Prior to my coming to “help” him, he was one of the millions who had responded to the previous year’s Tell Sid ad campaign and bought shares in newly privatised British Gas. Continue reading...
