Government levy fixed rate changes now showing on online account?

Hi ​@Abby_OVO thanks for the clearing up…I must say I had to read ​@Bendog’s post two or three times to get a handle on what was going on!  But now I think I understand…maybe it might have been clearer if the wording at the top of the Plan info had been something like “The newly amended Government Levy rates of your 1 Year Fixed Loyalty 17 June 2025 plan will apply from 1st April 2026” perhaps just to emphasise that no existing contract was being terminated, just the terms relating to the new tariff? Forgive me, my suggested wording is a bit woolly and only a feeble example, but something along those lines to make it clear that the rates were actually being improved!!

I mean ultimately it’s good news (at least in the short term!) for us consumers, but at first or third glance might not actually seem be worded to imply that!

All the best as ever….Walt

My problem was that nothing was communicated to me before these changes were made. I said that I understood WHY the changes were to be made. I just expected that customers would be informed of changes before they appeared on their Plan Page. 

The statement at the top says, quite clearly: “Your new 1 Year Fixed Loyalty 17th June 2025 plan will start on 1st April 2026.” This implies that the new plan will last for 1 year and not just until the end of my present plan. That could and should have been worded more accurately. That page is, after all, where customers can check that the rates on their bills reflect the rates on their agreed Plan. 

It would have been, relatively, easy to make the statement at the top an accurate reflection of what Abby has said will happen by saying something like (in my case): “Your amended 1 Year Fixed Loyalty 17th June 2025 plan will start on 1st April 2026 and finish on 6th August 2026. Details to follow via email/post.” There is no ambiguity here. 

I’d just point out that suppliers are under no obligation to give prior notification of price reductions, but they are required to notify price increases. You’ll enjoy the Standard Licence Conditions’ legalese to cover any nasty not actually a price increase - Disadvantageous Unilateral Variation:

  
You could argue that (c) applies here, I suppose, in which case there’s all sorts of other conditions to be met. That will presumably become clear when the promised email or letter turns up.

Still, it would be nice to let the customer know what was going on. Just a couple of sentences briefly ensuring that there is nothing to worry about and a more detailed email will come soon. 

To be kinda fair on the industry…

This is probably the first time the UK has ever suddenly made a change to the system which requires all Fixed Rate Tariffs to be modified mid-contract. It’s likely most billing systems aren’t really built to handle that because almost no-one ever thought it would happen.

Just some thoughts as an IT guy.

This is uncharted territory, so I suspect that there’s a little bit of left-hand-right-hand going on, coupled with a whole army of billing, IT, commercial, website and communications people rushing to meet a deadline which has probably already passed. Perhaps they’re concentrating on what has to be done, even if that means skating over the ‘would be nice’ stuff. I don’t envy them at all.

Fair comment.  However the emails that we have received are personalised to the extent that they include an estimate of the effect of the (as yet) unspecified rate reductions.  Given that this estimate can only have been produced with knowledge of the future rates, there seems to be no good reason not to have included that information, as well as clarifying that fixed term contracts were not in fact being abrogated.

Try scaling that up to 5+ million customers with a bazillion different possibilities…

It’s not as simple as you might think. With the limited time available, there’s only so much OVO can do.

As I said, OVO clearly know what rate they are going to charge me in order to be able to make the savings estimate, and they have managed to sow confusion by amending the contract end date without explanation.  At least one other supplier that I know of has overcome the challenge of telling their customers what their new rate is going to be in two week’s time.  But if you are telling me that it is too difficult for OVO, I am sure you are correct.

Gonna be honest here…

In this day and age where ANY good news is welcomed… One thing I’ve never understood is this... Why do people always want more whenever a good thing happens? More speed, more discount, more free stuff… I really don’t want to see another Energy Bill Support Scheme monster again...

Personally, I really think folks should just give OVO - and all other suppliers - more slack in the current situation. You absolutely will get the discounts from the recent government changes where they’re applicable but please be patient as this requires a bunch of background work since it’s not just a case of push magic button make cool things happen. We as the Forum Volunteers know everyone wants to see this work out just as much as OVO does and we feel the pain too. But OVO is clearly working on it and you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. This task has basically never really happened in the UK before and I think it’s been a shock to the entire industry - hence a likely reason why things aren’t being handled as smoothly as even I would admittedly like to see. And this is a rare admission from me on the OVO Forum.

I do want to take the opportunity to mention the chaos caused by the Energy Bill Support Scheme back in 2022. It only lasted a few months and was basically automated for the most part, but caused absolute bedlam on the Forum and I think we saw some of the highest activity levels the OVO Forum has ever seen during that period. We were literally working pretty much flat-out just to keep up with the insane levels of engagement. I don’t have the numbers handy but I do recall spending pretty much entire days doing nothing but responding to just EBSS related stuff. For me, I’d personally prefer not to relive the chaos again so I’m kinda hoping this latest change just works without the madness from last time.

I received this in an email this morning (20/03/2026) Although it does not actually state the new charges (although OVO, obviously, know what they will be), it does make it clear that the end of my fixed rate will still be on the same date as originally agreed by me.

Reverse engineering the figures in your email, and using the FACs on your plan page, we can apply the levy reductions of 3.54 p/kWh for electricity and 0.331 p/kWh for gas to estimate the saving:

Electricity: 2833 kWh x 0.0354 £/kWh ≈ £100
Gas:  5476 kWh x 0.0033 £/kWh ≈ £18
Total: £118

I think the difference is within the rounding error arising from using integer FACs, when billing always seem to use FACs with one place of decimals.

Subtract the saving from the current estimated annual cost to find the new estimate.

The current cost is just FAC x unit rate + 365 x standing charge, then add 5% VAT. It’s not unlikely that your new unit rates will be:

Electricity: 23.53 - 3.37 = 20.16 p/kWh
Gas: 5.81 - 0.031 = 5.78 p/kWh

Check: (0.2016 x 2833 + 0.0578 x 5476) x 1.05 ≈ £932 
Standing charges: (0.4944 + 0.2653) x 365 x 1.05 ≈ £291
Total new estimated annual cost: 932 + 291 ≈ £1223

Again, within a rounding error. One little caveat: I’ve seen some suppliers using a rebate on electricity unit rates of 3.51 p/kWh inc. VAT instead of the original estimate of 3.54 p/kWh. This original figure was derived from figures published by Ofgem in November 2025, so there may have been a change since then. The saving would then be closer to the email’s £117.23 figure, and your new unit rate could possibly be 20.19 p/kWh.

Please let us know what your rates turn out to be.

Further update: My Plan page no longer has the “Thanks for staying with us” section on it, including all of the text below that heading.

Everything else remains the same as in my original image at the top of this thread. So it starts with the My Plan heading.

Thanks everyone for your input on this thread. ​@Bendog I’ve checked my online account and app, and it all looks the same as yours. I also haven’t been contacted about the levy changes yet, so I can imagine there may be confusion caused by the online account / app info being changed before contact is made. I’ll feed this back internally.

If anyone needs more info on the levy changes you can visit our website here, or check this Forum topic:

OVO have just changed the end date of my fixed tariff from Jan 2027 to March 2026 is this right? If so what’s the point of a tariff if they can back out at any point??

Fixed Rates are being reduced from April 1st (2026) in line with Government policy.

Your new fixed rate from April 1st should end on the same date as when you fixed, but should be a bit lower than when you fixed.

The computer generated messages about this change may be confusing.

Long story short, this is the only way that OVO is able to make the changes. Your contract is still good until the original end date, OVO just has to “Break Fix” it in order to apply the reduced rates. Don’t panic - they know when it’s actually supposed to end.

Thats fair enough, but why haven’t they informed us they were doing this.

This was literally something which is likely very short notice for the entire industry and has basically never been done before. I’m willing to bet my entire life savings that just about no energy supplier billing system in the UK was previously capable of handling this exact scenario.

OVO has it’s own custom built billing platform but I imagine they had to write a bunch of new code just to make this work. It’s a “Break Fix” because that’s basically the only way they could do it.

Speed beats convenience in these cases. Notifying you is slow, just doing it is fast.

I too have noticed an end date on my one year fixed rate moved from 30th June to 31st March. Does this mean I can dive in and claim the new 1st April rate 3 months early and also avoid the £50 per fuel cancellation fee? I understand that the 1st April rate is already set lower than the 1st January 2026 rate but will probably be much higher in 3 months time due to the impact of the Iran and Ukraine Wars on emerging EU energy pricing ?  

This is a special situation and you don’t need to do anything, it will happen automatically

Your current fix will be automatically replaced by one with the reduced 1st April rate for the remainder of the time that the current one has left to run.

In your particular case that will be a new fix at the lower rates running from 1st April to 30th June.

If however you mean can you fix at the April rates for another 12 months then what you are proposing, ending a fix early to take on another fix, is known as a 'Tariff Hop'.

I have done it in the past with OVO, switching from a 1-year fixed tariff I'd had for 8-months to a new, different, 1-year fixed tariff; and the exit fees were waived in that case.
(Mostly the exit fees are to deter you from switching supplier mid-fix).

Before considering doing a Tariff Hop you need to check the Terms and Conditions of your particular current fix, some will allow you to tariff hop with no exit fee, but others don't allow it and will still charge the fee.
For example your particular fixed tariff T&C’s may have something like this, which clearly waives the fees for a Tariff Hop:

If you contact support they should also be able to tell you whether a fee would be payable if you tariff hop from your current fixed tariff to a new fix.

PS. You do need to go through support to actually do a Tariff Hop sucessfully, it isn’t something that you can do yourself.
For example to get the fees waived, the support agent has to tick a box on screen to waive the fees.

This all sounds a bit complicated. Surely if my 1 year fixed loyalty rate still has 3 months to go I will continue to benefit from the very low 22.62 p per kWh I locked in for a year late in June  2025. I certainly have no desire to change now because there have been 3 rate rises since I fixed and only one on aggregate, smaller reduction, to be expected on 1st  April 2026, which is still way above the 22.62 p per kWh I am currently paying !!?

ASHP here I come…!!!

Welcome to the OVO Forum ​@iangardiner and ​@Mickystan, and thanks all for your input on this thread.

As ​@Nukecad says, this is all automatic, and you’ll remain on your fixed plan for the same date range, just with a period of lower rates. The way the online account tariff info has been changed before official comms have been sent out has caused understandable confusion - apologies! Keep an eye out - you should receive confirmation of your new rates soon. 

You can find out more information about the levy on our website here, and in this Forum topic:

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Thank you Ben, as before - you are a force for clarity.

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