UK Growers warn of energy cost shock as Easter recess begins

The Chairs of the British Tomato Growers' Association and Cucumber and Pepper Growers' Association, Simon Conway and Joe Shepherdson respectively, have written a letter to MPs Peter Kyle and Dame Angela Eagle requesting relief from the pending standing change that will come into effect on April 1 amidst the ongoing crisis in Iran. Below is the letter published in its entirety.

Dear Peter,

Thank you to you and your officials for the work already underway with DBT and Defra colleagues to examine the impact of the planned increase in electricity network standing charges. As things stand, from 1 April our growers are facing millions of pounds in unavoidable additional costs; the impact of which we have demonstrated through the clear data and detail provided to your teams.

This alone would have placed the sector under extreme pressure. However, this situation has now been compounded by a sudden and severe gas-price spike, with wholesale prices more than doubling compared with the end of February. This mirrors the early stages of the Ukraine–Russia shock and is hitting growers during a critical production period.

The combination of the 1 April network standing charge increase and this abrupt gas-price surge represents an immediate and unsustainable financial burden. For a sector where energy can account for up to 30% of total production costs, this volatility is not just a financial inconvenience - projected annual cost increases now exceed levels that cannot be absorbed without cutting production.

Growers have invested heavily in efficiency, decarbonisation, and innovation. Many have reduced energy consumption, adopted CHP systems, and implemented advanced climate-control technologies. Yet the current standing charge model penalises these very efforts by imposing high fixed costs that cannot be mitigated through efficiency or behaviourchange. This is a sector central to UK food security, supplying tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other essential crops year-round. Without rapid intervention, growers will be forced to scale back output or stop production entirely, increasing import dependence, undermining food security and putting renewed pressure on food inflation.

Given the sudden gas-price shock and the scale of the April cost impact, we urgently request immediate relief through inclusion in the relevant exemption schemes—such as the Energy Intensive Industries (EII) scheme—from the 1st April. This is the mechanism we have previously discussed with your teams, and it remains the most effective and targeted route to prevent immediate and avoidable harm to UK food production. As you are aware, these schemes are designed precisely to protect strategically important, energy-exposed sectors from the kind of volatility we are now experiencing, and help them remain competitive.

In the current situation with compounding rising energy costs, failing to extend this relief risks destabilising the sector overnight. Inclusion in the exemption schemes from the 1st April would provide the essential buffer growers need to maintain production, protect jobs, and safeguard domestic food supply.

We would welcome dialogue with your team at the utmost urgency.

Yours sincerely, Simon Conway and Joe Shepherdson.