Government levy fixed rate changes now showing on online account?

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.