Two tariff decisions landed a week apart. On 28 August the Utility Regulator confirmed that SSE Airtricity Gas Supply’s regulated tariff would rise by 19.2%, or £174 a year, in the Greater Belfast and Gas to the West areas. On 4 September it confirmed that firmus energy’s regulated tariff in the Ten Towns would rise by 9%, or around £87 a year. Both take effect on 1 October 2026.
Both announcements state that the tariff the regulator reviews is the tariff “for domestic and small business customers”. If you run a café, a salon, a bakery, a small workshop or an office and you buy gas on a published tariff rather than a contract you negotiated, your gas cost rises by this percentage on 1 October.
What the Utility Regulator decided
The SSE Airtricity review covers around 203,500 customers in the Greater Belfast area and around 5,500 in the Gas to the West area. The firmus review covers 76,863 customers in the Ten Towns. That is roughly 286,000 domestic and small business accounts across Northern Ireland.
The regulator puts the rise down to wholesale gas prices. Markets Director Colin Broomfield put the wholesale price of gas at 169 pence a therm in late August, “twice as high as pre-conflict prices”. A week later, in the firmus announcement, Leigh Greer put it at around £1.80 a therm, having doubled since the Iranian conflict began. The regulator also notes that regulated suppliers’ profits are capped at around 2%.
For context, here is the regulator’s own comparison of combined annual regulated electricity and gas bills from 1 October, on 3,200 kWh of electricity and 12,000 kWh of gas:
| Electricity | Gas | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power NI + SSE Airtricity | £1,093 | £1,079 | £2,172 |
| Power NI + firmus (Ten Towns) | £1,093 | £1,060 | £2,153 |
| Great Britain | £1,121 | £1,144 | £2,265 |
| Ireland | £1,347 | £1,379 | £2,726 |
Northern Ireland stays below both. But those are household consumption figures on a standard credit tariff, and the regulator flags that the Great Britain number already includes VAT and policy cost reductions that have not yet been applied here.
Why two businesses 25 miles apart get different increases
Northern Ireland has two gas markets, with different distribution network operators and different network use of system costs, which is why one week produced 19.2% and the next produced 9%.
The Greater Belfast area runs from North, South, East and West Belfast out through Carrickfergus, Newtownabbey, Lisburn, Carryduff, Castlereagh, Ballygowan, Newtownards, Larne and North Down. The Western area is Enniskillen, Cookstown, Magherafelt, Omagh, Dungannon and Strabane. The Ten Towns area is Derry/Londonderry, Limavady, Coleraine, Ballymoney, Ballymena, Antrim, Craigavon, Banbridge, Newry, Armagh and more than 25 other towns and villages.
So a bakery in Dungannon and a bakery in Portadown, forty minutes apart, get a different increase on the same morning because of which pipe network their postcode sits on. The regulator also states that it does not regulate firmus energy’s Greater Belfast tariff. A firmus customer in Belfast is not covered by the Ten Towns decision at all. Your supplier’s name alone does not tell you which announcement applies.
Worked example: the same café in Omagh and in Portadown
This illustration uses the published percentages and tax rules. Take a small café using 60,000 kWh of gas a year — 5,000 kWh a month — and spending £4,200 a year on gas before VAT.
| Omagh (SSE, +19.2%) | Portadown (firmus, +9%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Gas cost before 1 October | £4,200 | £4,200 |
| Increase | £806 | £378 |
| Gas cost after 1 October | £5,006 | £4,578 |
| Extra per month | £67 | £32 |
The two identical businesses pay £428 a year apart because of where they are. Because the increase is a deductible cost, a limited company paying corporation tax at the 19% small profits rate — the rate on profits up to £50,000 — carries £653 of the Omagh café’s £806 after tax relief. The relief only helps if the business is profitable enough to get the relief.
VAT on business gas
Whether you pay 5% or 20% VAT on business energy turns on how much you use. HMRC’s VAT Notice 701/19 sets the de minimis limits: piped gas is reduced-rated at 5% where the supply to one customer at one premises is no more than 150 therms or 4,397 kWh a month, and electricity at 5% where it is no more than 1,000 kWh a month. Above those, it is standard-rated at 20% unless at least 60% of the supply is for qualifying use.
Our illustrative café burns 5,000 kWh a month, so it sits just over the gas line and pays 20%. A smaller unit next door burning 4,000 kWh pays 5%. If you are VAT-registered, either rate is recoverable and the increase costs you the net figure. If your turnover is under the £90,000 registration threshold, you carry the VAT as well — which is the group this increase hits hardest.
There is a second line on a business gas bill that a household never sees. The Climate Change Levy runs at 0.801p per kWh for gas from 1 April 2026, rising to 0.827p from 1 April 2027, and HMRC states the rates do not apply to supplies to domestic consumers or to charities for non-business use. On 60,000 kWh that is £481 a year, separate from the tariff and unaffected by it.
What to do this week
Confirm which gas area and which tariff you are on. Check the area rather than the supplier name, and whether you are on the regulated tariff or a contract. Your last bill says it. The Utility Regulator’s business consumers page sets out what protections apply to a non-domestic account, and its guide to managing energy debt is the place to start if you will struggle to pay the October bill.
Reforecast from 1 October. Take the percentage, apply it to your actual gas spend, and put the new number into the cashflow for the winter quarter — that is when the volume is highest and the increase bites hardest. That is ordinary management accounts and cashflow work. While you are in the bill, check your monthly kWh against the 4,397 line and make sure the VAT rate on it is right, which is a VAT returns question.
What is still uncertain, and when we will know
Three questions are open. Electricity. Power NI’s domestic tariff was not part of this review, and the regulator says only that it continues to monitor it — so there is no electricity decision to plan around yet. The discount. The Department for the Economy said on 25 August that a VAT reduction worth “over £50” would be added to the NIRO Domestic Electricity Discount Scheme, with the combined discount now proposed for October rather than September. The regulator’s own footnote says the funding is still to be confirmed by Treasury and the final figures and dates are not settled. It is also a domestic scheme, so no business should put it in a forecast. Wholesale. At £1.80 a therm the price is roughly double where it sat before the conflict; where it goes next decides the next review, and these tariffs are typically revisited around April.
The rate changes on 1 October. If you want your winter numbers looked at with the new rate in them, our Northern Ireland team in Ballymena can do that, and the business rates guide covers the other fixed cost that lands on the same premises.
