Extreme cold weather meant that British Gas took at a £15 million hit as its engineers had to deal with more boiler breakdowns CENTRICABritish Gas has hinted it could raise energy prices for a second time this year after reporting a 16 per cent drop in profits in the first half. The UK’s biggest household energy supplier, which announced a 5.5 per cent price increase in April, said that profits fell by to £321 million after being squeezed by a cap on prices for vulnerable households, higher wholesale prices and hundreds of thousands of customers switching elsewhere. Iain Conn, the chief executive of Centrica, British Gas’s parent, suggested that the energy company would consider increasing prices again by up to £52 a year for its standard tariff before a wider price cap for those households comes in at the end of this year. Centrica reported a 4 per…

Source: The Times July 31, 2018 08:15 UTC