The household bills going up and down after April changes

Millions of households are facing steep bill hikes from this month as companies "take it in turn to hit consumers with price rises", said The Telegraph.

 As the new financial year begins, "it's not just your council tax which is rising", the paper said. But it's not all bad news, with the energy price cap falling and the national living wage rising.

Which bills are going up?

The TV licence fee has gone up by 6.6% to £169.50 from 1 April, as a two-year price freeze ends. NHS dental fees have risen by 4%, and road tax has increased by about £10 for most cars registered after April 2017. "Even stamps will rise by 10p" as of today, said The Independent.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Council tax for an average Band D property in a typical local authority is rising by 5%, up from £2,065 to £2,168. And the hike could be as high as 21% in parts of Wales.

Water bills in England and Wales are also increasing, by an average of 6.2%, or £28 a year, meaning an annual bill of £445 will rise to £473, according to industry body Water UK.

Most broadband deals and mobile phone contracts rose by 7.9% on 1 April, a hike described by consumer group Which? as "completely unacceptable". The average consumer will now pay around £27.19 more a year for broadband and £24.23 for mobile phones.

Which bills are going down?

The energy price cap is set to fall to its lowest level since March 2022, before the "full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to a jump in gas prices", said The Guardian.

Under the new price cap, average bills will fall by 12% from £1,928 to £1,690 a year for a typical household that uses gas and electricity and pays by direct debit.

In more good news, the minimum wage increased from yesterday from £10.42 to £11.44 an hour, an uplift that is expected to benefit about 2.5 million people, with full-time workers forecast to receive an extra £1,800 over the year.

So who will be better or worse off?

The rise in the statutory national living wage is "welcome news for low-paid workers", the Living Wage Foundation told the Big Issue in October. But it falls short of the real living wage, which is "the only rate that is independently calculated based on the cost of living".

And living costs could climb even more quickly, as "some businesses say the higher labour costs will make it harder for them to keep prices down", said the BBC.

Afzal Rahman, a policy officer for the Trades Union Congress, told Al Jazeera that the "bigger picture" is that average pay packets have flat-lined in real terms over the past 15 years by failing to keep up with consumer prices, so the wage rise is from a meagre starting point.

The lower energy cap also has to be viewed in relative terms. It is still "far higher" than the £1,138 cap in the summer of 2021, before the energy crisis "escalated", said The Guardian. The i news site said that households with extremely low usage could actually see bills increase, because of higher "standing charges".