Watchdog needs to restrain BGT

To say that Centrica has a headstart in the deregulated electricity market (MW September 10), is surely one of understatements of the year.

With the virtual monopoly BGT holds over the gas supply sector, it has indeed “been handed a formidable powerbase from which to launch its electricity offering”.

You quote one source as saying regulators will in the “long-term” realise that BGT’s 70 per cent share of the gas market is a “unacceptable” and add that Centrica may “eventually settle for 40 per cent of the gas market and 30 per cent of the electricity market”. Surely this intervention should come sooner rather than later if a truly competitive market for utilities is to develop.

Pity the poor marketers at rival companies who must labour against such odds in the meantime.

John Peterson

Barrow

Cumbria