Even more British Gas customers are to see pressure on their finances increasing, it has been suggested.

According to uSwitch, the decision by the utilities provider to increase costs on its online Click Energy 5 and Click Energy 4 tariffs will place a larger monetary burden on people. The average annual bill for people on such price plans will go up from 742 pounds to 880 pounds - a surge of 18.6 per cent or 138 pounds. It was also claimed that Click Energy 5 is now one of the most expensive online deals around as the firm charges such customers 880 pounds per year - some 175 pounds less than the 1,055 pounds customers on a standard tariff have to pay.

The news comes just weeks after the energy supplier announced that the majority of customers will see their bills rise by 15 per cent, placing annual costs above the 1,000 pounds barrier. However, at the time British Gas claimed that its online Click Energy 4 customers would be protected from the price hike.

Following on from the news it is possible that consumers could find that their capacity to meet other demands on their finances, such as UK personal loans, credit and store cards and transport costs, comes under more pressure.

Commenting on the figures, Tim Wolfenden, head of home services for uSwitch, said: “When British Gas raised its prices for standard customers it said that it had been forced to because of higher wholesale prices in the last six months of 2007. However, many eyebrows were raised by the significant price gap it brought in between online and standard customers - standard customers were paying up to 313 pounds more, which many believed was discriminatory and difficult to justify. Clearly the pressure has now told - not just from the point of view of maintaining an unsustainably low price, but also from the public scrutiny that this two-tier price system had started to attract.”

Mr Wolfenden added that as the announcement came as a “bolt from the blue” British Gas customers should now look to reduce pressure on their finances and see if they can get a better deal by changing provider. He added that there are still a number of good online-based tariffs available, with various fixed price and capped deals also able to offer protection for consumers’ pockets.

For those who are worried about their ability to manage their money due to the prospect of increasing energy bills, a low-rate loan might be of assistance. In using this type of UK loan for debt consolidation purposes borrowers may be able to converge numerous demands on their finances into a single low-cost monthly repayment. This, in turn, may lead them to have more disposable income at the end of each month.

A cheap consolidation loan may prove to be of particular use to people living in Sussex. Figures released by the Argus newspaper in January indicated that 563 people in the southern county voluntarily declared themselves bankrupt last year - an increase of 45 per cent from 2006. The majority of these consumers came from Hove and Brighton with the level of people from these two towns struggling with money management going up by 70 per cent.

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