UK businesses could be sitting on £500 million in inaccurate charges and miscalculated utility bills according to consultancy Inenco, which has uncovered that one in every five business energy bills contains errors.
The business utility advisor analysed a large sample of energy invoices of businesses across a range of industries and sectors. It found billing miscalculations from suppliers, data collectors and distribution network operators, while meter reading errors generated 8% of those found by Inenco.
Retail and leisure businesses represented the highest volume of errors identified (42%), with companies in these sectors potentially able to save up to £200 million. The most common cause of incorrect bills resulted from changes in tenancy followed by inaccurate data from automatic meter reading.
Meanwhile, manufacturers across the UK accounted for 13% of the revenue found by Inenco to be recoverable and could be owed over £65 million from suppliers across the energy supply chain. Similar to other sectors, meter read errors were found to be one of the most common while inaccurate calculations of the Climate Change Levy accounted by 10% of the total claims for the past year.
At a time of continued reductions in funding for local authorities, public sector organisations accounted for almost a quarter (22%) of the savings uncovered over the 12 month period. Inenco has claimed there is potential scope to recover up to £112 million from across the sector, equalling one third of the NHS’ annual electricity bill.
Inenco is therefore advising companies across all sectors to undertake “simple” audits of current and historic invoices to make sure they are only paying for the energy they use.
“Businesses can recover incorrect charges for the past 6 years and the entire process can be managed end-to-end to make it simple and stress-free,” the consultancy states in its report ‘Uncovering the Missing Million’.
