Your gas and electricity debt can be written off in full: who Ofgem is clearing 2022–2024 bills for, and what you must do

Everyone has heard about the Ofgem price cap: it rose to £1,723 a year on 1 October, and we covered that in detail. Far fewer people know that the same regulator is running a scheme that writes off old gas and electricity debt outright — up to half a billion pounds of it — and that an ordinary household that simply could not get through the winter of 2022 may qualify.

It is called the Debt Relief Scheme (DRS). Its best feature is also its biggest trap: there is no application form. Your supplier finds you in its own data. Which means missing your write-off takes nothing more than leaving one letter unopened.

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Why has the regulator decided to write energy debt off?

Household energy debt in Britain has stopped being an exception. Ofgem puts total debt and arrears at £4.48bn in the third quarter of 2025 — the twelfth consecutive quarterly rise. Accounts in arrears went from 3.4 million to 3.6 million year on year, up 5%. The more telling number is the depth: average arrears for customers with no repayment arrangement rose 11% in a year. The number of people in debt grows slowly; the size of the hole grows fast.

The regulator's conclusion was pragmatic. A large share of this money will never be recovered. It sits on accounts, stops people switching tariff or supplier, and ends up spread across everyone's bills anyway. Writing it off once, under clear rules, is cheaper. Ofgem expects the scheme to clear up to £500m for roughly 195,000 customers.

Who qualifies for the write-off, and on what conditions?

When the debt arose. Only debt billed between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2024 counts — precisely the two winters when wholesale prices spiked. Anything accrued later is outside the scheme, and that is the most common disappointment.

How much. You need at least £100 of eligible debt. On a dual-fuel account the £100 is counted across both fuels combined; on a single fuel it has to be £100 in that fuel alone.

Benefits. Phase one is aimed at people receiving a means-tested benefit: Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, or Pension Credit — both Guarantee Credit and Savings Credit. If you are not sure whether you are entitled to any of these, start with our guide to Universal Credit: a great many people never claim because they assume they earn too much.

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You have to be showing signs of life. The condition is written drily but matters more than any other: in phase one the customer must have made a payment in the billing period immediately before the supplier enrols them. You do not have to clear the debt — you have to be paying something. Prepayment meter customers meet this automatically, since they pay in advance by definition.

The write-off is full, with no matching contribution: you are not asked to pay half to have the other half cleared. The cap equals the eligible debt held at the statutory consultation date of 6 November 2025.

Do you need to apply for the write-off?

Suppliers identify eligible customers themselves, data-matching against DWP records through the same channels used for the Warm Home Discount. The rules require a supplier to make reasonable endeavours to contact every eligible customer, including at least one further attempt distinct from the first.

Three practical conclusions follow. Check that your supplier holds a current phone number, email and address, especially if you have moved. Do not bin unopened post from your energy company — the notice will come from the supplier, not from the government. And if you have stopped paying altogether, restart even a token regular payment: that is the engagement condition.

Customers who cannot be enrolled automatically are offered three routes: agree a repayment plan, move to Fuel Direct (energy paid straight from your benefit), or accept a referral to an FCA-authorised debt advice charity. Any of the three keeps you in. Refusing all three takes you out.

What if you are not on benefits?

That is what phase two is for. It targets people who hold eligible debt and genuinely cannot repay it but receive no means-tested benefit — the classic working household on a low income. Instead of a benefits data match, it uses a standardised income and expenditure assessment that Ofgem developed with the industry. On the regulator's own timetable phase two went live in summer 2026, applications close in the first quarter of 2027, and the scheme itself runs to the end of 2028.

The window is open, in other words, but it is not open forever.

What if your debt does not fit the scheme?

This is the likeliest outcome: Ofgem estimates phase one reaches about a third of all customers holding eligible debt. What else works:

Breathing Space, which freezes interest and enforcement while you get your budget in order. How it works, and the order in which to clear debts when there isn't enough for all of them, is set out in our piece on priority debts — energy is a priority debt, and pushing it to the back of the queue is a mistake.

Supplier hardship funds. Most large companies run their own, including write-offs tied to an agreed repayment plan. They are not advertised, but you can ask directly.

And cutting the bill itself: the time to check whether to fix your tariff is before the debt starts growing — we set out how to do the maths on fixing.

How do you avoid being scammed over debt write-off?

Anything with "written off" in it attracts fraudsters within days. Remember three things. The write-off is done by your own supplier, on your own account — there is no "debt write-off centre". There is no fee: not a pound upfront, not a percentage of the amount cleared. And nobody has any business asking for your bank details "to process the write-off" — the scheme removes a debt, it does not move money.

If a call or message is urgent and wants card details, it is not your supplier. There is one reliable check: hang up and call back on the number printed on your own bill or shown on the company's official website.

What should you do this week?

Three steps, under an hour in total. Look at your latest bill, see whether you are in arrears, and work out roughly how much of it accrued before March 2024. Make sure your supplier has your current contact details, and restart a small regular payment if it has lapsed. And if you receive any of the benefits listed above, simply call your supplier and ask about the Debt Relief Scheme by name — a direct question works faster than waiting for a letter.