With 4 in 10 households on the brink of being unable to pay their energy costs, this news will be thoroughly disheartening. For the government, another energy price rise is the stuff to keep ministers awake.

Scottish Power – one of Britain’s biggest energy suppliers has today, warned UK householders to brace for a further rise of more than £900 in their annual bills this year.

The energy company has also made an appeal to the government to enter emergency talks over tackling the “crisis” of soaring electricity and gas costs.

The FT reports that – “ScottishPower said it expected Britain’s energy price cap to go up by about 47 per cent to an average of £2,900 a year per household when it is next adjusted by regulator Ofgem in October. The price cap was increased by 54 per cent to £1,971 a year in April, reflecting sharp increases in wholesale gas and electricity prices that began last year following concerns over gas supplies in Europe. It dictates bills for more than 22mn households not on fixed-price deals and is currently recalculated twice a year.”

As has already been reported, householders are now up against it. Sky-high energy bills are contributing to a wider cost of living crisis in the UK that the Bank of England has warned will push the country into recession this year. Further evidence has come through that households are now taking credit card and general debt faster than at any time on record and that savings are now been drawn down faster as well.

It is already anticipated that high energy price rises will put further numbers of households into poverty – fuel or food and that this winter this could accelerate another one million into poverty.