Ahead of implementing the Pump Watch scheme and giving powers to the Competitions and Markets Authority to regulate the market, the government has launched a voluntary scheme that currently means 14 of the biggest fuel retailers are providing prices at their filling stations on a daily basis. The Competitions and Markets Authority, which reported last year that retailers had ‘overcharged’ drivers by £900 million in 2022, is also continuing to monitor prices in the interim, but with seemingly little effect.

“The big four supermarket retailers, which dominate fuel sales, are once again flatly refusing to cut their prices in the wake of much lower wholesale costs”, says RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams. “We realise that supermarkets, along with all businesses, have been affected by inflation, but these increases seem blatantly unfair. And, of course, without them cutting their prices, there is little incentive for other retailers to follow suit.

According to Williams, having tracked fuel prices against inflation it’s easy to see the link. “We therefore have a strange situation where unreasonably big fuel margins are making inflation higher than it should be”, he says.

“If the work of Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the CMA has had any effect to date on improving fuel price transparency, we ought to see prices at the pumps reduce significantly in the next week due to a sustained drop in the cost of oil. Sadly, we fear retailers are likely to need a little more encouragement before this happens.”

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