Around 66% of energy consumers could switch to a cheaper deal but haven’t.

These households could move to a tariff as cheap as £822, according to regulator Ofgem.

This is much cheaper than the average ‘standard variable tariff’ from a large supplier, which costs around £1,066 annually.

In September, 15% of all power and gas consumers switched to a new supplier. At this point, switching rates over a 12-month period were at their highest level since February 2012.

This year saw 5.5 million switches between January and September, a 28% increase on the same period a year before.

It included 2.3 million domestic gas switches and 3.1 million domestic energy switches.