Concern struggling families in North Yorkshire missing out on support to pay bills
Citizens advice say suppliers aren't doing enough to advertise their social tariffs
A "postcode lottery" of social tariffs is leaving households missing out on almost £2 billion worth of support to pay their essential bills, according to a report.
Citizens Advice found identical households are receiving "completely different" levels of support depending on where they live because of a lack of consistency and effort to promote social tariffs among suppliers.
The service warned that badly designed social tariffs which have "patchwork" support available in different areas were falling short in keeping people connected to essential services.
It said a low income household could be missing out on an average saving of at least £350 a year - with £1.9 billion sitting unclaimed across water and broadband schemes alone.
The advisory service said the Government could take "immediate" action "without having to spend a penny" by ensuring suppliers proactively offer social tariffs to their low-income customers, aided by better data-sharing between government departments and firms.
It has also called for an end to a postcode lottery for water and broadband social tariffs, making them consistent across markets in line with other schemes such as energy.
Citizens Advice found half of British adults - or 25 million people - cut back their spending on essential bills such as water, broadband, car insurance and energy in the last year.
Fiona McCulloch is from the York branch of Citizens advice and says the cost of living means many can't even afford social tariffs: "One the lowest social tariffs for broadband is £15 a month, which sounds quite low. But when we have people presenting with negative budgets of anything up to £40 a month, then £15 can be very difficult for them as well."
She is urging anyone struggling to get advice: "You might be in financial crisis that might be affecting your mental health quite badly. Therefore you're probably not in a space where you think right today I'm going to sit down for half an hour and I'm going to research this, which is really where we come in."
"Year on year, we've seen around double the people we saw last financial year and we've dealt with another third more issues. So people are coming to us with maybe a couple of things they want to talk about, but then when we delve in a little bit more, we find there can be up to 10 things they need help with."