Andy Burnham won a third term as Greater Manchester mayor with a manifesto promising ‘more public control’ over energy and water. The headline is bold. The detail is thin. For homeowners wrestling with £1,800 annual energy bills, the question is not whether public ownership sounds good – it is whether it cuts the direct debit.
As reported by The Guardian, Burnham’s pitch is about governance, not kilowatts. He wants a publicly owned energy company for the city-region, modelled on the Welsh government’s failed bid for a not-for-profit supplier. The catch is that energy generation, transmission and retail are regulated by Ofgem, not local mayors.
Who qualifies – and who doesn’t
The plan would initially cover Greater Manchester’s 2.8 million households. But ‘public control’ does not mean ‘free energy’. It means a local body would buy wholesale power and sell it back to residents, potentially at lower margins than the Big Six. The Energy Saving Trust notes that switching supplier already saves the average home £300 a year – a local public company would need to beat that to justify the upheaval.
Burnham’s team has not published a cost-benefit analysis. The Welsh government’s Ynni Cymru project, which aimed to supply 250,000 homes by 2025, has so far signed up fewer than 5,000. Scale matters. A Greater Manchester Energy Company would need hundreds of thousands of customers to negotiate competitive wholesale contracts. Without that, bills could be higher, not lower.
What it costs a typical 3-bed semi
A typical 3-bed semi in the North West uses about 12,000 kWh of gas and 2,900 kWh of electricity per year. At current price cap rates, that is roughly £1,820 annually. A local public supplier would still pay the same network charges – about 30% of the bill – and the same VAT. The savings would come from cutting the retail margin, which Ofgem estimates at £80–£120 per customer. That is real money. It is not transformative.
But the bigger prize is in home energy upgrades. Burnham’s combined authority already runs a local retrofit scheme, part-funded by the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. A public energy company could bundle heat pump installations with a preferential tariff – a model used by Octopus Energy and E.ON. The difference is that profit would stay in the region, not leave for shareholders in Germany or France.
The ‘but’ pivot – what this misses
Yet the plan says almost nothing about the single biggest driver of household bills: the wholesale gas price. Since the invasion of Ukraine, wholesale costs have accounted for 50–60% of the typical bill. A publicly owned supplier cannot fix that. It can hedge better than a private company, but it cannot escape global markets.
Nor does it address the grid. The North West has some of the oldest gas and electricity infrastructure in the country. Ofgem’s RIIO-2 price control allocated £25 billion for network upgrades nationally, but local connection delays still push heat pump installations back by months. A public energy company could lobby for faster grid connections, but it cannot overrule the regulator.
What homeowners should do now
Burnham’s proposal is a political signal, not a practical roadmap. For homeowners in Greater Manchester, the immediate action is to check eligibility for the Great British Insulation Scheme and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme – both of which are live now, regardless of who owns the supplier. The mayor’s office says it will publish a feasibility study by autumn 2025. Until then, fix your roof insulation, switch to a fixed tariff if you can, and watch for pilot areas where the public company might test a local heat pump tariff. That is where the real saving may come.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The plan is years from implementation and would initially only cover Greater Manchester. Savings would come from cutting the retail margin – about £80–£120 a year – not from reducing wholesale costs or network charges.
Not yet. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is still national and administered by Ofgem. Greater Manchester's local retrofit programme is separate and limited to social housing. Homeowners should apply through the national scheme first.
