Government must pressure energy companies to ensure savings are passed onto customers - Jayne Dowle

If nothing changes, taking an average of three baths a week - Yorkshire Water doesn’t mention what its customers might be doing to keep clean on the other four days – will end up costing £1,023 a year, because of the rising cost of gas and electricity, not because what we pay for our water has significantly changed.

Regular bathing cost £542.88 in 2022, a 79 per cent rise since 2021, when it was just £303.70.

Heating a bath is the “most expensive” domestic use of water, according to the company’s latest so-called ‘Teapot Index’.

However, the second most expensive use of water is heating a dishwasher, up from costing £132.68 to run annually in 2021 to around £326.22 in 2022, and then the washing machine, costing £222.77 to run last year.

Overall, the cost of all these personal care and domestic chores has increased by 95 per cent within 12 months. Even boiling the kettle to make a cup of tea has gone past boiling point, from an annual average cost of £10.37 in 2021 to £18.69 in 2022.

You don’t need me to point out that incomes have certainly not risen in line with these stratospheric increases in the cost of simple daily activities.

It makes for sobering reading, doesn’t it? How is any household supposed to cope financially when basic utilities are literally doubling in price before our eyes?

Especially as we have no control over the situation, except to switch off appliances, stop taking baths, limit the number and length of showers, and basically, contemplate living like medieval peasants. In the dark, in the cold and with no access to fragrant bubble baths.

Yorkshire Water is being pragmatic. It says that even making “small changes” could potentially save households around £700 a year on energy bills.

You could have a four-minute shower instead of an eight-minute one, it suggests, which would save an estimated £128.18 a year.

We should also make sure that both our washing machines and dishwashers are full before pressing the ‘go', as it costs 47.6p and 91p per load respectively, we’re told. My family will attest that in living memory, I have never merrily switched on either unless it is absolutely packed to the gunnels.

Tradesmen for the call-out company protecting all my domestic appliances would no doubt agree that any mechanical problems I report are probably largely due to overloading.

Yet what else can the responsible homeowner do?

I don’t know about you, but it’s only January and I’m already heartily sick of being told how I could ‘make savings’ when I’m already sitting in a freezing cold house working hard to earn a living, wrapped in four layers with a blanket round my legs.

I’ve been thrifty for 20 years now, since I moved back to Yorkshire and a draughty old Edwardian house that cost a fortune to heat. And even though I’ve moved since then, and where I live now is better insulated and easier to keep warm, I’ve never, ever been profligate with gas and electricity.

I’m so bored of the constant onus put on ordinary people to try and make savings where they can.

Yorkshire Water’s well-meaning recommendations come alongside reports of falling wholesale prices for gas across Europe, thanks to a milder winter than expected and successful self-rationing in other countries, in particular Germany. This good news does come with the caveat that the drop will take several months or more to impact household bills - energy companies tend to purchase their supply well in advance, to hedge against further price changes.

However, it is surely not beyond the remit of the government for ministers to now put pressure on the energy companies to ensure that any savings they are about to make will be passed on as soon as possible to hard-pressed and often desperate customers.

We will do our bit, whether we like it or not, as we shiver in our homes, unplug the dishwasher and don’t take a bath until May. It’s definitely well beyond time that the likes of British Gas, EDF and the rest dipped into their huge profits to reward all our sacrifices.