Consumers and workers are paying the price of an energy retail market that doesn’t work

Ovo Energy has today announced that it is to make a quarter of its workforce redundant in the face of spiralling energy costs.

This is just the latest bad news in a sector that over the past few months has seen many companies go out of business.

Sue Ferns, senior deputy general secretary of Prospect, said:

“These job losses at Ovo are a further result of the crisis in energy retail. The government needs to urgently look at wholesale reform of the energy retail market including bringing it under local public control. Consumers and workers are paying the price for a system that simply does not work.

“We hope that Ovo is able to stick to its promise to limit losses to voluntary redundancy. Prospect will be working with the company to mitigate as far as possible the impact of this decision on our members.”