How a new Citizens Advice service will help tackle the mountain of energy debt
Citizens Advice will be launching a new debt advice service for energy consumers in England and Wales later this year, with equivalent arrangements available in Scotland.
We’ve been working on this proposal for some time, responding to the significant increase in people coming to us with energy debt since the energy crisis. Across the board, energy debt has reached record levels — standing at £4.15bn and rising. Ofgem figures show that nearly 2 million households in debt had no arrangement plan in place in March 2025.
Changes now underway are finally beginning to tackle the problem. Alongside Ofgem’s forthcoming debt relief scheme, and the Government’s increase in the number of households eligible for the Warm Home Discount, better access to energy debt advice can play a vital role in moving consumer outcomes in a better direction.
How the new service will transform energy debt advice
For the first time, households and small businesses who contact our consumer service helpline about debt to their energy supplier, will be able to access holistic support to help them get their finances back on track. Our new Consumer Energy Debt Advice (CEDA) support service will be delivered as a partnership with independent debt advice charities, Money Advice Trust and StepChange, and align with high quality support for people in vulnerable circumstances delivered by the Citizens Advice Extra Help Unit.
We’re really excited about this expansion of our advice role in the energy sector — it recognises that the world has changed for people and our support offer needed to evolve as well. Our 85 year history has taught us that providing people with the right advice and support plays a huge role in helping them move forward in their lives.
We don’t just help people improve their lives, our advice helps make the overall system more cost effective. Based on a 2024/25 survey, almost 82% of our energy advice clients told us that they were satisfied with the advice provided and 92% would use us again. For people, where our advice had helped them resolve their issue, this was worth £900 on average. We’re really proud of the transformative impact we have, which is why we developed this new service.
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We estimate that our new CEDA service will:
- Reduce the human cost involved in problem debt and its effects, valued at £4,300 per person helped
- Reduce the annual cost of bad debt in energy by £2.53 for each GB household when fully mobilised
- Reduce the demand for public services and by Year 3, the service will return £5.61 per GB household to the public purse
The fully mobilised cost of this new service will be just 42p per household each year, meaning it will deliver excellent value for money.
How we can improve access to sustainable solutions and drive policy change
We’ll soon be starting work on supporting CEDA clients to access government funded energy efficiency or low carbon heating support schemes. That means we’ll be helping people resolve their pressing financial situation as well as helping them put in place the necessary changes that will deliver lower energy bills in the longer term. We’re also planning to develop a mechanism for energy suppliers to directly refer customers into the service, so people can access the service more seamlessly.
At Citizens Advice our role and purpose is to shape a society where people face far fewer problems. We’ve built a strong feedback loop between our advice services and our advocacy work, so that the data and insight from the people we help every day, can lead to change in policies and practices. Our CEDA service is a practical example of how we’re evolving our advice model to do just that. It also represents the first major change to the statutory advice model since Citizens Advice took on the advice and advocacy roles in 2014.
We’ll use the data and insight from our new CEDA service to share insight with our partners across the energy sector and develop solutions that improve the lives and experiences of people and small businesses across England and Wales.
We’re playing a strong role in transforming essential service markets
I’ve written before about how to be a good statutory advocate — this is the official role Citizens Advice play for energy and post consumers. It’s a cost effective way of supporting people in essential service markets — and when done well can also identify the opportunities to transform the way markets operate.
Providing consumer advice — and seamlessly linking to debt advice — can get people’s finances back on track and reduce the costs of bad debt that weighs on bills. Tackling consumer rip-offs and raising standards is a good way of building people’s confidence to engage with new products and services. Enabling innovation and more efficient services leads to economic growth and better living standards.
Many of the challenges in the energy sector are shared in other essential services, which don’t currently benefit from a strong statutory advocate or advice provider. We believe this model could easily be adapted and implemented to deliver even more impact for people and the country.
Thank you to our partners and supporters
Bringing a new service like this into being is never straight forward. We’d like to thank our delivery partners StepChange and Money Advice Trust as well as the early champions of this service, Ofgem, Energy UK and all of its members. Citizens Advice worked closely with officials from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Department for Business and Trade (DBT), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and HM Treasury (HMT), as well as the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) to develop the CEDA service.
