Beccles boat rental company hoping for busy summer as energy bills triple
The owners were worried their energy bills would go up by six times
Last updated 17th Apr 2023
The owner of a Beccles based boat rental business tells us their energy bills have tripled over the past few months.
Despite this, Hipperson's Boatyard says they're looking forward to a strong Summer season.
Mary Sparrow owns the business: "Easter's been good for us.
"It's not been as great for us as Easters during Covid, when people couldn't leave the country. That was always going to be the way, but it still has been good.
"Over the Easter weekend we were completely booked solid. We're just going to wait and see how it goes over this season...
"So far, predictions suggest it'll be a really positive year. We're hoping we can ride through the cost of living crisis and come to better days beyond it - hopefully it'll be a peak that will start to come down."
"Our energy bills have tripled"
Mary's hoping their busy Easter is a sign of positive things to come, particularly amidst rising energy costs: "My husband and I were recently saying how thrilled we were that our electricity has only tripled, rather than going up six times, which was our original estimate.
"It's a funny time we're living in, when we're saying our electric costs have tripled and we're quite content with that!...
"Costs are going up, tolls are going up, everything's going up, but we're trying not to put our prices up too much, because we've got a lot of repeat guests who we really value and we want people to keep coming to the Broads!"
The government's new energy bills discount scheme for businesses, which began at the beginning of the month, will run for a year.