Bill rank is not population rank
According to Ofgem's July – September 2026 cap, East Midlands is cheapest at £1,805 (#1 of 14 on typical dual-fuel) while London is largest (#1 of 14 on population) at £1,845 (bill rank #4). Merseyside & North Wales is dearest at £1,950 on 1.6m people (population #13).
Bill peak is not standing-charge peak
According to 23 stored Ofgem quarters, January – March 2023 is typical-bill #1 of 23 at £4,279 (standing rank #15) ≠ October – December 2024 standing #1 of 23 at 92.65p/day (typical-bill rank #14 at £1,717). The crisis bill peak is a different quarter from the standing-charge peak.
How the 14 bills cluster
Exclusive cut of these 14 regions by typical dual-fuel cash band under the current cap. Orthogonal to the per-region ChartBar below and to the bill≠population dual: band counts only, not a ranked list.
Typical dual-fuel bill by GB region
All 14 distribution regions for medium TDCV. Merseyside & North Wales is £145 above East Midlands for identical usage.
Typical dual-fuel bill by GB region: East Midlands is lowest at £1,805 and Merseyside & North Wales is highest at £1,950 for July – September 2026.
Cheapest regions
East Midlands leads at £1,805/year.
Most expensive regions
Merseyside & North Wales tops the table at £1,950/year.
Standing-charge trajectory
How fixed daily charges climbed across the price-cap era.
All 14 regions, cheapest first
| # | Region | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | East Midlands region B | £1,805 |
| 2 | North West England region G | £1,818 |
| 3 | West Midlands region E | £1,844 |
| 4 | London region C | £1,845 |
| 5 | East England region A | £1,849 |
| 6 | North East England region F | £1,859 |
| 7 | Yorkshire region M | £1,861 |
| 8 | Northern Scotland region P | £1,862 |
| 9 | Southern England region H | £1,865 |
| 10 | Southern Scotland region N | £1,870 |
| 11 | South Eastern England region J | £1,873 |
| 12 | South Wales region K | £1,882 |
| 13 | South West England region L | £1,889 |
| 14 | Merseyside & North Wales region D | £1,950 |
All 14 GB energy regions for July – September 2026. Cheapest East Midlands £1,805, most expensive Merseyside & North Wales £1,950, GB average £1,862.
Jump to a region
How the regional cap works
Great Britain's electricity network is divided into 14 distribution regions, each served by a distribution network operator (DNO) - the company that owns and maintains the local poles, wires, substations and meters. Examples include UK Power Networks (London, the South East and the East), National Grid Electricity Distribution (the Midlands, the South West and South Wales), Northern Powergrid (the North East and Yorkshire), Electricity North West, SP Energy Networks (Merseyside, North Wales and southern Scotland) and Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks (the South and northern Scotland). Ofgem sets the default tariff cap separately for each of these regions every quarter, so the headline national figure of £1,862 is really an average of 14 slightly different caps.
The reason the regions differ is network cost recovered from the households connected to that network. A sparse region with long runs of cable spreads a large fixed infrastructure cost across relatively few customers; a dense urban region spreads similar network cost across more homes. This extract does not publish a network-share percentage of a typical bill. That is why, this period, East Midlands is the cheapest region at £1,805 and Merseyside & North Wales the most expensive at £1,950 - a £145 difference for two households that use exactly the same amount of gas and electricity.
What the board does and does not move
Population rank is a different board: London is the largest of the 14 GB regions (#1) yet its typical dual-fuel bill is £1,845 (bill rank #4), so a bigger customer base is not automatically a cheaper cap under this publication.
The national series is a third board. January – March 2023 leads typical bills while October – December 2024 leads combined standing charges - two peaks, not one crisis story. This extract stores one current regional snapshot, so it does not rank quarter-to-quarter region moves.
Your distribution region is fixed by where your meter is. You cannot move to a cheaper region's cap by switching supplier: the network charge travels with the property, not the contract. The figures on this board are the Ofgem default-tariff (standard-variable) ceiling for a typical dual-fuel household in each region. Fixed-rate deals sit outside that ceiling and are not ranked here.
A meaningful share of each typical bill is the fixed daily standing charge, so low-usage households see it as a larger share of the total. The standing-charge trajectory charts how that fixed element has moved across the cap era.
How to read these rankings
These rankings are a like-for-like comparison: every region is shown at the same typical, medium-usage household (2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas a year) on a direct-debit tariff, so the differences you see are purely regional, not the result of one household using more energy than another. The bill calculator reapplies the published unit rates and standing charges at a chosen usage. For the detail behind any single region, follow the link to that region's page. The trends page charts every stored national quarter since the cap began in 2019.
Sources
- Ofgem default tariff cap - July – September 2026
- Regional figures are derived from Ofgem's per-region default tariff cap rates; see our methodology for how they are calculated.
Open data: energy-bill-statistics.csv (same CSV as /statistics).
Every figure on PlainEnergyBills is rendered directly from Ofgem source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on Ofgem source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.