What The Increase In The Energy Price Cap Means For Property Teams

Ofgem has confirmed the new energy price cap is rising 4% for October to December 2026, taking the average dual-fuel bill to £1,723 a year. For most people, that’s just a slightly bigger bill but for letting agents and landlords, it’s a reminder of how fast void costs can add up between tenancies.

Electricity now costs 26.32p per kWh, with a daily standing charge of 54.83p. Gas costs 7.97p per kWh, with a daily standing charge of 29.68p. Ofgem has also scrapped VAT on electricity from October 2026 to March 2027. That’s good news for bills, but it makes it harder to compare costs cleanly against previous periods.

Why standing charges matter more than people think
Standing charges are fixed and applied every single day a property is connected to the grid, whether anyone’s living there or not. At today’s rates, that’s about 84.5p a day in gas and electricity standing charges combined, before a single unit of energy gets used. Across a lettings portfolio of dozens or hundreds of properties, it adds up fast, especially if change-of-tenancy paperwork is slow to go out.

This is a pattern we see constantly. As soon as a property goes void, the notification process begins, and if that’s not automated, the agent or landlord ends up quietly covering the void energy bill, sometimes for weeks. A 4% rate rise might look small, but it makes every day of that delay a bit more expensive.

The same is true in reverse as the faster the new tenant’s details reach the supplier, the sooner the bill is correctly attributed to them, rather than defaulting to the landlord or a previous occupier’s account. With standing charges now higher across the board, even a few days’ lag shows up more clearly on the final statement.

What this means in practice
Every time the price cap moves, void periods and billing errors get more expensive. Manual, paper based notification processes get more expensive. None of that is visible in the headline 4% figure and only shows up later, buried in someone’s utility statement.

Where Helpthemove fits in
This is the gap Helpthemove was built to close for letting agents. Our platform automates change-of-tenancy notifications to councils, water companies and energy suppliers the moment a move happens, cutting the admin time involved by more than 90%. That frees agents up to focus on lettings, not chasing utility providers. And with a single time-stamped record of exactly when each notification went out, there’s proof on file if anything’s ever queried.

Price caps will keep moving, meaning agents who keep treating utility notifications as a manual afterthought will keep absorbing void costs they don’t have to. The ones who automate it won’t even notice the next rate rise, because by the time it lands, their properties are already correctly billed. That’s the difference Helpthemove is built to make, find out more today.