Ofgem lifts the energy price cap – the details
The energy regulator for Britain, Ofgem, has said it will increase the cap on energy bills from October by 2%, the equivalent of a £35 rise in annual bills for the average home.
Here’s more details of the energy price cap just announced, from Ofgem.
A table showing the latest energy price cap Photograph: OfgemElectricity rates
If you are on a standard variable tariff (default tariff) and pay for your electricity by Direct Debit, you will pay on average 26.35p pence per kilowatt hour (kWh). The daily standing charge is 53.68 pence per day. This is based on the average across England, Scotland and Wales and includes VAT.
Gas rates
If you are on a standard variable tariff (default tariff) and pay for your gas by Direct Debit, you will pay on average 6.29 pence per kilowatt hour (kWh). The daily standing charge is 34.03 pence per day. This is based on the average across England, Scotland and Wales and includes VAT.
Why energy prices have gone up
Volatile global wholesale prices for energy are partly behind the increase, as well as the cost of the government’s expansion of its warm home discount policy.
Updated at 05.27 EDT
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The energy regulator for Britain, Ofgem, has said it will increase the cap on energy bills from October by 2%, the equivalent of a £35 rise in annual bills for the average home, despite a 2% fall in the wholesale price in the energy markets over the last three months. Prices for households will go up just as the colder weather sets in because money is needed to cover the rising cost of the government’s energy policies.
About £15 of the £35 increase will fund an expansion of the warm home discount scheme to provide an extra 2.7 million households with a £150 reduction in their bills.
Thames Water has agreed a payment plan for £123m sewage and dividend fines, as it races to secure funding to avoid temporary government nationalisation.
Earlier this month the government approved the appointment of insolvency advisers to consult on plans for Thames Water to be placed into a special administration regime (SAR).
The debt-laden utility firm was hit with a record £104m fine by Ofwat in May over environmental breaches involving sewage spills, after failing to operate and manage its treatment works and wastewater networks effectively.
At the same time, a further £18.2m fine was levied on Thames for breaking dividend rules, the first penalty of its kind in the water industry.
The penalties were originally due to be paid by 20 August but the regulator gave the company some breathing space to pay the fines. Ofwat has now approved Thames’s request for a payment plan, which will result in it paying £24.5m, or 20% of the penalties, by the end of September, with the rest to be paid later.
Lego builds record sales of £4bn as parents steer children away from smartphones. The Danish toy company said sales increased by 12% to a record 34.6bn Danish kroner (£4bn) in the first half of the year, rising well ahead of the recovering global toy market in which sales rose 7%.
Niels B. Christiansen, chief executive, said Lego could be profiting from parents’ desire to keep children away from phones because of the effect of social media on mental health.
Over in the US, the highlight of the day will be when the chip designer Nvidia reports its quarterly earnings after the market close, or around 9pm BST.
Wall Street has opened flat today, with the S&P 500 share index down by 0.06% at the open. The Nasdaq index is also down slightly by 0.08%.
All eyes will be on chip designer Nvidia today when it reports after the US market closes.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Taipei Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Reuters
Victoria Scholar, of the investment broker Interactive Investor, says:
Nvidia gets set to release its second quarter results after the bell as the final US tech giant to report this season.
There’s a lot of focus on this earnings report given that it comes off the back of a shaky period for tech stocks. The AI darlings like Nvidia, Palantir and Meta have suffered some selling pressure as investors start to question whether the winning streak is running out of steam. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI suggested a bubble could be forming in AI stocks and a report from MIT said 95% of organisations are getting zero return on generative AI investments.
However this comes after a strong bull run off the April lows for Nvidia which rebounded to become the first public company to achieve a market cap of $4 trillion in July.
…According to Refinitiv, Nvidia is expected to report Q2 earnings per share of $1 on revenues of $46 billion, up from 96 cents and $44.06 billion respectively in the previous quarter.
There will be a lot riding on guidance for the rest of the year with investors looking for reassurances that Nvidia can continue to deliver growth. China will be another focal point following the resumption of its AI chip sales there after Nvidia agreed to pay the US government 15% of Chinese revenues. Last quarter, Nvidia said it lost out on $2.5 billion because of China export restrictions.
Investors will also be paying close attention to its Blackwell business which made up 70% of Nvidia’s data centre sales last quarter.
Elsewhere this afternoon, the London-listed warehouse owner Warehouse Reit confirmed that it has ended takeover talks with its rival Tritax Big Box Reit, clearing the way for a takeover by the commercial property investor Blackstone.
Blackstone’s latest offer for the company amounts to 115p cash per share, valuing the business at about £489m.
ShareMarket snapshot: Stocks muted ahead of Nvidia earnings
Here’s what markets are doing as we go into lunchtime…
The FTSE 100 is flat as a pancake today – NatWest is the worst performer, with its shares down 2.4%. The best performer so far is JD Sports, though its shares are only up 1.7%. That is despite the fact that it reported a fall in sales in its second quarter, though investors appear to have taken confidence in the fact that performance in its North American market has improved slightly. The fashion retailer also announced another £100m share buyback.
The mid-cap FTSE 250 index is down by 0.3%. The miner Hochschild is the worst performer, with its shares tumbling by roughly 14% today after it cut its production forecasts for the year.
The stock market is pretty muted across Europe today, with the Stoxx 600 up slightly by 0.15%.
Meanwhile the US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of other major currencies, is up 0.45%. The pound is now down 0.42% against the dollar to $1.34.
The big market news is not landing until later this evening: Nvidia will report its quarterly earnings after the US markets close, after 9pm BST. The chip designer crossed the $4 trillion market capitalisation mark in July, becoming the biggest company in the world.
Nvidia shares are up by 0.6% in pre-market trading. For now, futures for both the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq are up just 0.03%.
ShareRetail sales volumes down in August, says CBI
More bad news from the retail sector this morning: sales volumes fell in August, marking 11 consecutive months of decline, according to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
The CBI’s monthly gauge of how retail sales compared with a year earlier stood at -32 this month, a slight improvement of -34 in July.
Martin Sartorius, principal economist at the CBI, said:
Retailers endured another tough month in August, with annual sales volumes falling for the eleventh consecutive month. Weak demand and higher labour costs continue to put pressure on margins, dampening sentiment across the retail and wider distribution sector. This downbeat outlook is reflected in firms’ plans to scale back investment and hiring.
The government’s fiscal decisions are continuing to bite, and retailers’ struggles send a clear signal: business cannot be asked to balance the books again at the Autumn Budget. Building business confidence through delivery must be the priority — starting with a rethink of the Employment Rights Bill, which risks piling on unnecessary costs and holding back jobs and investment.”
Fears that UK consumers will rein in spending sent jitters across the retail sector yesterday, wiping hundreds of millions of pounds off the value of some of the biggest retailers in the country, including the owners of Primark and B&Q, and the home improvement chain Wickes.
The UK government has just sold £5bn worth in three-year bonds in a scheduled action. Demand was good, with the auction covered 3.16 times. The bonds were sold with a yield of 4.375%, due in 2028.
The gilt market has been rocky lately, with yield on the 30-year bond trading close to its highest level since 1998 yesterday, at 5.62%. Yields rise when prices fall.
The yield on the 30-year rose to as high as 5.627% in early trading this morning, but it has since recovered, with the yield now at 5.583%.
Mohit Kumar, an analyst at the investment broker Jefferies, paints a gloomy picture of the UK’s economic outlook:
We have held a negative view on the UK fiscal picture and maintain the view. We see UK growth disappointing relative to official forecasts which would leave the Chancellor with a bigger budget hole than current official forecast suggests. Tax rises look inevitable in the Autumn statement. However, we are approaching levels where further tax rises start becoming counterproductive.
Updated at 06.05 EDT
UK producer price inflation rises to 1.9% in June
Producer output price inflation rose to 1.9% in the year to June, up from a revised rise of 0.7% in the year to April 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The ONS suspended the publication of its producer price indices in March, after it found calculation errors dating back to 2020. The figures published today represent interim data before it resumes regular publication in October.
The statistics agency said in July that producer price inflation in previous years had been higher than originally calculated.
It comes as pressure grows on the ONS over the reliability of its data. Staff at the Treasury and its independent spending watchdog have said they are struggling to get a clear picture of the economy because of problems at the ONS with producing reliable numbers.
Shares in utility stocks are rising this morning after the energy regulator Ofgem announced that it will increase its price cap on bills by 2% from October.
National Grid, SSE and Severn Trent are all up roughly 1% this morning, among the best performers in the UK’s blue chip FTSE 100 index. But overall the FTSE is not moving much, up very slightly by 0.03%.
Over in Europe, the Stoxx 600 index is up 0.4%. The French Cac 40 share index recovered 0.4%, after a fall earlier in the week over concerns around the potential collapse of Prime Minister François Bayrou’s government.
ShareCharities call for more help with energy bills
Turning back to energy bills, several UK charities are warning that the 2% rise in the energy price cap (which covers England, Wales and Scotland) will hurt vulnerable people.
Official figures showed in May that energy bill defaults hit a record high, with 2.7% of direct debits for gas and electricity failing due to lack of funds.
Disability equality charity Scope has said millions of disabled people are being pushed into deeper fuel poverty as prices continue to rise.
Abdi Mohamed, head of policy at the charity, said:
Life costs more if you are disabled – on average an extra £1,095 a month. We hear from disabled people every day who tell us they are unable to power vital medical and mobility equipment, facing increasing pain and losing their independence.
The current support available for disabled people barely scratches the surface. And many no longer get the warm home discount at all, despite enormous energy costs.
The government must act with urgency to close the devastating gap in support and tackle this crisis.
Joanna Elson, chief executive of the charity Independent Age, argued political intervention is urgently needed, and that the warm homes discount should be extended to at least 2027. She said:
Far too often older people in financial hardship are bed bound by the cold, turning in early for the night dressed in hats and scarves in a desperate bid to keep warm through the winter months.
…The situation is dire, in the UK over one million older households are living in fuel poverty. The people in later life we speak to are making drastic and dangerous cutbacks because they cannot afford their energy bills. They are routinely switching off heating systems for weeks on end, visiting public places to stay warm and cutting down on food so they can pay their energy bills. This is unacceptable.
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the learning disability charity Mencap, said:
People with a learning disability simply must be protected from ever increasing energy costs, or they face being pushed into fuel poverty, unable to stay safe, warm and healthy.
The 1.5 million people in the UK with a learning disability are more likely to have unavoidably high energy costs because they may need to charge specialist or medical equipment or heat their homes for longer.
…With bill prices set to increase even further this autumn, people with a learning disability and their families will continue to face these dangerous choices which leave them feeling anxious and afraid.
ShareLego profits build as toymaker attracts all ages
Sarah Butler
Lego has built a bigger share of the toy market as sales rose 12% in the first six months of the year after its Botanicals and Grand Prix-themed sets helped it attract adults as well as children.
A customer reaches for a box from the Lego Dots range at the Lego A/S store in London, UK. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
As sales increased to 34.6bn Danish Kroner (£4bn), the company, which is known for its colourful building bricks, said it would open a new $1.5bn US factory and distribution centre in 2027, its seventh factory worldwide. The company previously said it was not bringing forward the development of the factory despite new import tariffs introduced by the Trump administration this year.
The group opened a new site in Vietnam earlier this year and expanded factories in Mexico and Hungary to meet demand.
Lego’s net profit increased 10% to 6.5bn Danish Kroner as the company said it had signed deals to produce toys linked to the Bluey and Pokémon cartoon series and launched the She Built That campaign to encourage girls to use Lego creatively.
Niels B Christiansen, the chief executive, said:
We are very pleased to have maintained our strong performance in the first half of 2025, winning share in the global toy market. This growth is driven by our large and innovative range of products that continues to be relevant across ages and interests.
Updated at 08.54 EDT