An urgent warning has been issued to energy customers as it’s revealed that ‘half’ of British Gas, OVO, Octopus Energy and EDF customers are being told to ‘review’ their bill immediately.

Astonishingly, only 54 per cent of UK residents – typically customers of major energy firms such as British Gas, OVO, EDF, Eon Next, Octopus Energy and others – regularly carry out this crucial check.

The cities with the lowest percentage of people regularly reviewing their energy bills were Manchester at 78 per cent, Cardiff and Newcastle both at 82 per cent, and Sheffield and Southampton rounding off the top five with 85 per cent and 87 per cent respectively.

Birmingham and London had rates of 88 per cent, alongside Leeds, while Glasgow, Edinburgh and Nottingham completed the top ten with 89 per cent each.

James Longley, Managing Director at Utility Bidder, commented: “With the cost of energy constantly fluctuating, understanding your energy bills and energy usage is critical. At Utility Bidder, we want British homeowners and businesses to be getting the best value for their energy, and help you get a better understanding of your spending.”

He added: “With this in mind, we’ve devised the Billing Awareness and Misconceptions Report which aims to highlight the most important questions when it comes to reviewing energy bills.

“To gather this data, we used TLF Research to create a survey asking respondents about how well they monitor and understand their energy bills.

“A selection of questions such as ‘do you regularly review your energy bills’ and do you get confused by your energy bill? ‘ were put to 2,000 UK respondents – and the findings are extremely interesting at a granular level.

“Our findings are also of great interest in determining the regions and major UK cities with the most considered approach to energy bills. For example, Manchester has the highest percentage of respondents who do not regularly review their bills of the 15 major cities included in our findings, as well as the highest percentage of people that get confused by their bill.”