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UK businesses are being increasingly impacted by rising energy prices

Matthew Mann Director 15 February 2022
8 in 10 UK businesses (79%) consider the future impact of energy prices to be a challenge.

With Ofgem’s recent energy cap announcement seeing a record price rise of 54% to offset record increases in global gas prices, we’ve revisited our Savanta Business Tracker to understand the impact of rising energy prices on UK businesses before the significant increase comes into effect from the 1st April.

Savanta has been tracking the negative impact of rising energy prices on UK businesses since November 2021, and our new data from January 2022 shows a notable increase in the proportion of businesses who are being negatively impacted; with 6 in 10 of all UK businesses now reporting a negative impact.

Furthermore, it’s getting to the point where most businesses anticipate that they will have to start passing down these additional operating costs to their customers. 51% of all UK businesses anticipate that they will have to increase the prices they charge to their customers over the next year.

Industry sectors which are traditionally the heaviest users of energy are more likely to be anticipating future prices rises. In addition, the majority of all but two of our core sectors anticipate that they will need to rise prices at some point this year.

Looking to the future, 8 in 10 UK businesses (79%) consider the future impact of energy prices to be a challenge. Whilst all our core industry sectors anticipate that future energy prices will pose a challenge, businesses operating in the IT, technology & communications sector are most likely to view this as a key issue. This suggests that whilst they might have been able to limit the impact of such price increases and insulate (excuse the pun!) their customers to date, this is likely to change in the future.

With the energy price cap not kicking in until 1st April and a further increase anticipated later this year, we will continue to monitor the impact of rising energy prices on UK businesses with bated breath…

What we can say now though is that despite the pre-existing challenges and opportunities of the unprecedented recent business environment (i.e., Covid-19 and Brexit), rising energy prices coupled with inflation rates are increasingly being viewed as the key future challenges for UK businesses!

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