Ofgem has announced that British Gas will take on the business electricity supplier’s 40,000 customers.
The electricity supplies have been placed on out-of-contract “deemed” rates with immediate effect.
Customers can now choose to agree a fixed price with British Gas, or sign a contract with another supplier.
British Gas Business (BGB), part of Centrica, took over as “supplier of last resort” just past 11pm on Friday night, following Electricity4Business (E4B) going into administration on Wednesday, and administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) failing to find a buyer for the Milton Keynes based company.
PwC confirmed that 100 of E4B’s 140-strong workforce were made redundant, and said that E4B fell into trouble as a result of soaring wholesale energy prices. The unfortunate situation for E4B’s customers means they have not been disconnected, but have been transferred to BGB (nominated by Ofgem), a large percentage of which have been put onto tariffs that are much higher than their current contract price.
Customers previously with E4B (now BGB) are faced with the challenge of searching for the best electricity prices at a particularly volatile time, in an already extremely volatile market. Badar Khan, managing director of British Gas Business, said: “We are working hard to ensure a seamless transition to British Gas Business for all affected customers and we will be contacting every customer to explain this.”
Utilities Savings’ customers
E4B customers who signed up with Utilities Savings should already have been contacted by one of our energy consultants. We have agreed a special 12-month deal with BGB, so that customers need not spend any time out-of-contract and pay expensive default charges. Alternatively, we can provide longer term fixed rate deals from a range of suppliers as always. If you have not already been contacted, please don’t hesitate to call our main office on 0845 33 75 997.
0845 33 75 997