Cost of living: how the government helped to reduce commercial energy bills

The government ran the following schemes to help business with rising energy bills.

• The Energy Bill Relief Scheme, which provided an automatic discount on the energy bills of many businesses. This scheme ran from 1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023.
• The Energy Bills Discount Scheme continued to provide discounts to some businesses at a reduced level during the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.
• The Non-Domestic Alternative Payment Scheme. This provided payments in 2023 to some customers whose commercial properties were off-grid for gas and that used an alternative fuel, such as heating oil (kerosene), wood or liquid petroleum gas.

If you pay or were paying energy costs to a landlord

If you paid energy costs to a landlord for a period where they received support from a scheme mentioned above, they had to consider passing on a ‘just and reasonable’ amount of the support they received to you. Your landlord should have notified you of their decision on how much they would pass on, even if they decided it was not appropriate to pass on any of the benefit.

Contact us for advice if you feel your landlord did not pass on the right amount of benefit from a scheme to you. You can also find more information on landlords’ obligations on GOV.UK.