National Price Rise Day: today sees the price of ten essentials hiked
Today is being dubbed National Price Rise Day, as a number of shocking price rises kick in on 1 April. From this point millions of people will be paying more for everything from mobile phone calls to showers and stamps.
Hannah Maundrell, Editor in Chief of money.co.uk, who compiled the list of price hikes, comments: "Whilst we normally associate the 1st April with the impending start of the new tax year, it seems to have become national price hike day. The majority of the price hikes seem pretty small, many as low as 1%. However, all these small hikes add up and lead to fewer pounds in your pocket."
Depending on how you use any of these services, you could end up paying hundreds, or even thousands of pounds more. We reveal ten price hikes you need to be aware of.
1. Council Tax
Bills are on the up - and in some cases people have seen the biggest rises in a decade. The average council tax bill has now topped £1,500 for the first time ever, and you can expect your council tax bill to rise as much as 4%.
2. Water
Bills will increase by 1% for the average household. It's an increase of £2 to a total of £389. Of course, in some regions, water bills are a great deal higher.
3. Prescriptions
Your medicine is set to get even pricier, as prescription costs will go up another 20p from £8.20 to £8.40.
4. Posting a letter
The price of a first class stamp is up from 63p to 64p, and the price of a second class stamp is now 55p. Posting a small parcel will cost 5p more - at £3.35. This is particularly striking when you consider that on 1 April 2012 (before price controls were lifted) a first class stamp cost 46p and a second class stamp 36p.
5. Dental charges
Seeing an NHS dentist will be even pricier, as the price of a checkup will rise from £18.90 to £19.70. The charge for treatment will rise 5%, so that a band 2 course of treatment will cost £53.90, and band 3 will cost £233. Given that so many people are already skipping the dentist in order to cut costs, it begs the question whether this is just going to mean more people ending up needing emergency care.
6. NHS wigs
The cost of NHS wigs and fabric supports are rising by 1.7%. The idea is presumably to squeeze a little more cash out of cancer patients, because they're in a perfect position to afford it.
7. Stamp duty
Buy-to-let investors will see stamp duty rise 3% from today. It means the cost of the tax will increase by an average of £5,911 when buying a house in the UK or up to £13,686 on London property purchases.
8. Mobile phone calls
O2 customers and EE customers will see their bills go up by 1.3% this year.
9. Flights
The cost of air passenger duty (APD) on a long haul flight is set to go up by almost 3%. APD on economy flights will increase from £71 to £73 and from £142 to £146 for those travelling in all other classes.
10. Gas and electricity
More than 25 fixed price deals will come to an end this week. These include tariffs from British Gas, EDF Energy, Scottish Power and Npower. Unless you move to another cheap deal, you will be rolled onto a standard contract with your supplier, and can end up paying more than £150 more each year.
Could you get a better energy deal?
These price rises are even more irritating given that inflation is running at a far lower rate. At the moment it's around 0.3% - which means you're unlikely to have received much of a pay rise this year (if anything) - so it's going to be a nightmare for many families to find the extra cash.
