We asked Ofgem what it was doing to support vulnerable customers. Some stakeholders criticised Ofgem’s decision to add the SOLR cost levy to the electricity standing charge when customers cannot influence this cost by reducing their energy usage. Ofgem told us that it was examining the impact on different groups of vulnerable customers of spreading the cost of supplier failures across the standing charge and the volumetric charge. It explained that it was also working closely with government on the package of support available to customers.50 In May 2022, as part of its package of measures to help households during the cost of living crisis, the Government announced that all UK energy customers would receive £400 of support with their energy bills from October 2022 through an expansion of the Energy Bills Support scheme.51 We asked the Department how it would ensure that this support reached the customers it was intended to help, particularly those with prepayment meters. The Department told us that “a large fraction” of customers who use prepayment meters would receive the payment automatically and that it would adopt this approach this where possible. It told us that where this was not possible, it had worked through what the right option would be to ensure that customers still benefited from the support available, including whether to use vouchers similar to those used in other schemes for customers on prepayment meters. It explained that it thought that it had a wide enough range of options to ensure that all prepayment customers to access the same benefit as others.52