NHS leaders warn of service cuts as hospital energy bills soar (England)

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Northerner

Northerner

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Hospital trusts in England face “eye-watering” rises in energy bills of £2m a month each due to the fuel price surge, with NHS leaders saying patients may face longer waiting times or even see their care “cut back” as a result.

NHS trusts are concerned they will have to make critical choices on staff levels and the services they provide in order to keep operating, with energy costs predicted to be as much as three times higher than a year ago.

Bills for non-domestic customers such as hospitals are not subject to the price cap announced by Ofgem, which is rising by 80% in October, and are therefore even more vulnerable to surging wholesale prices.

The BMJ surveyed NHS trusts in England for details of their recent and predicted future energy bills and how they expected to operate this coming winter when taking into account the additional energy charges on the way. Most said they expected their energy bills to double at least.

www.theguardian.com

NHS leaders warn of service cuts as hospital energy bills soar

Costs expected to rise by £2m a month for some English trusts, leading to funding gap and difficult choices
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Northerner said:
Hospital trusts in England face “eye-watering” rises in energy bills of £2m a month each due to the fuel price surge, with NHS leaders saying patients may face longer waiting times or even see their care “cut back” as a result.

NHS trusts are concerned they will have to make critical choices on staff levels and the services they provide in order to keep operating, with energy costs predicted to be as much as three times higher than a year ago.

Bills for non-domestic customers such as hospitals are not subject to the price cap announced by Ofgem, which is rising by 80% in October, and are therefore even more vulnerable to surging wholesale prices.

The BMJ surveyed NHS trusts in England for details of their recent and predicted future energy bills and how they expected to operate this coming winter when taking into account the additional energy charges on the way. Most said they expected their energy bills to double at least.

www.theguardian.com

NHS leaders warn of service cuts as hospital energy bills soar

Costs expected to rise by £2m a month for some English trusts, leading to funding gap and difficult choices
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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Oh dear, a sorry state of affairs, sadly I don think it will improve over the next couple of years.
 
Listening to discussion on radio in car coming back from short break away, business people phoning in about spiralling energy costs & how they might have to close, one said he's monthly bill will rise from 17k to 95k, so goodness knows how hospitals care homes will cope.
 
Amity Island said:
Any idea why electric prices have gone up? Nuclear and wind are effectively free. Cost of wind and uranium haven't gone up. Some electric is made by gas, but at beginning of the year it was claimed all electric was from non-fossil fuels.
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I’m not even going to get started on this as I have strong political views about it all, but when Martin from Martin’s Money Tips gives an interview where he’s so angry and passionate about the catastrophic state of affairs and the government not really doing anything to prevent it, I think that says something. He warned the government over a year ago and is saying that people will die as a result of rising prices, inflation etc. and they need to do something NOW! It’s Totally immoral when profits are increasing, payouts to shareholders are increasing, executive pay and Bonuses are increasing, but somehow, prices are not falling, and the wages of the people actually producing the stuff are relatively decreasing. same with Royal Mail, Railways etc. Oops, here I go!
 
Amity Island said:
Any idea why electric prices have gone up? Nuclear and wind are effectively free. Cost of wind and uranium haven't gone up. Some electric is made by gas, but at beginning of the year it was claimed all electric was from non-fossil fuels.
Click to expand...

Apparently to do with huge demand in energy since height of pandemic, more manufacturing taking place. War in Ukraine hasn't helped matters either.

Don't know ins & outs if honest, just know there's some greedy b£££ards raking in vast amounts of profit on back of it all, oil giants being some.
 
nonethewiser said:
Apparently to do with huge demand in energy since height of pandemic, more manufacturing taking place. War in Ukraine hasn't helped matters either.
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That explains the general rise in energy prices. As I understand it electricity prices are going up because it's tied to the cost of generating electricity using gas (it's something the EU and the UK are looking at changing).
 
Amity Island said:
This means these announcements of closures of NHS services, other businesses, people going hungry and cold is because of an old out of date linking of the price of electricity to gas powered stations, when at the beginning of the year they claimed all our electricity was being generated by non-fossil fuels.
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Partly. We (the UK) still rely a lot on gas for heating and we have relatively low efficiency buildings. People in other countries are much less hit by this (presumably for a variety of reasons, but significantly because their governments are being more effective).

Here's a press release about the review (I couldn't find a good description of how the thing works now but there's a hint in the press release):

www.gov.uk

UK launches biggest electricity market reform in a generation

REMA is a major review into Britain’s electricity market design, set to ensure cost benefits of cheaper energy trickle down to consumers in the long term.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
 
Not disagreeing about the impact of the power bills, but it's not just that. You can't run full services if you're short 10% of your staff. And that's not even mentioning the state of social care blocking healthy people leaving hospitals.

www.theguardian.com

NHS vacancies in England at ‘staggering’ new high as almost 10% of posts empty

Quarterly figures show 132,139 roles were vacant at end of June, including more than 46,000 nurse posts
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Amity Island said:
An old debate about energy sources in the UK. Like Blair says, you can't just magically make nuclear power plants suddenly appear, they need planning years ahead.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1565401085623341057
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Like it or not nuclear is way to go to get out of this mess, wind farms solar panels are weather dependant & can't produce anywhere near enough to what we use, time people realised that.
 
Amity Island said:
Any idea why electric prices have gone up? Nuclear and wind are effectively free. Cost of wind and uranium haven't gone up. Some electric is made by gas, but at beginning of the year it was claimed all electric was from non-fossil fuels.
Click to expand...

Heard a radio interview with someone who had worked in the industry and seemed to know his stuff.

As I understand it the energy companies must use the ‘going rate’ for both energy and gas. And as there is worldwide hike in energy prices (supply… demand… blah blah) then the global energy price is up. Way up.

So we are paying Putin Prices for our own North Sea gas (apparently about 50% of our overall needs) which is completely unaffected by Nordstream, Russia, Ukraine or anything else.

I really hope the incoming PM does something about this mess, to force the energy providers to charge profitable-but-not-price-gouging rates on domestic gas, nuclear and renewable electricity.

Even something like an average of the past 5 years, plus 15 or 20% would be a HUGE reduction on current wholesale energy prices.
 
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