Scottish Borders Council is protected from a hike in energy prices, it emerges

The public and businesses are bracing themselves for significantly higher gas and electricity bills after a record increase in global gas prices saw an energy price cap rise of 54 per cent.

The move will impact on 22 million customers with those on default tariffs paying an additional £693 a year.

But at a meeting of Scottish Borders Council' s executive committee today, Tuesday, February 8, it emerged that the local authority will not be facing such a financial challenge, at least in the short-term, as it has forward paid its energy costs.

Council leader and committee chair Mark Rowley said: "There is a lot of talk about significant energy costs for the council but again there are ups and downs because some facilities will have been used less because of Covid. The paper before us tells us that some of our energy is bought up to two and a half years in advance and that gives us some shielding."

And in a question to David Robertson, the council's head of finance and corporate governance, he said: "What sort of proportion of our energy costs are kind of hedged in that way at the moment and leading on from that when do we expect to see the pressures that are obviously there in the domestic and commercial electricity and gas market feeding through into higher costs. Do we have a little while yet?"

Mr Robertson responded, saying: "So yes, we have basically forward purchased the vast majority of our energy needs for the next financial year 2022/23 so that the council is essentially protected against the increase in the price of wholesale gas and electricity.

"We purchased the majority of our energy costs, 80 per cent of our electricity costs are purchased in advance and therefore we are not seeing the level of pressure that is impacting on domestic prices in terms of energy costs and have not therefore had to provide significant extra funding in the budget associated with energy.

"Of course, moving forward, that will become more of a pressure because we have not yet bedded in our energy requirements for 23/24 and future years but we are hoping the current spike we are seeing in energy prices will be a short-term phenomenon."