Spiralling operating costs, including the installation of EV chargers, is pushing up petrol prices – that’s the view of the fuel industry following a report by the UK’s competition regulator, which called out historically wide retailer margins.
In its quarterly update on the fuel sector, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) set out how the cost of fuel remains stubbornly high despite having dipped in recent months. At the time of writing, petrol sits at an average of £1.34 per litre, while diesel costs around £1.41 per litre.
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Part of the reason for these lofty prices are wide retailer margins which, between January 2024 and March this year, averaged as much as 9.2 per cent and 8.1 per cent for standard retailers and supermarkets respectively. This, the CMA says, cost drivers an extra £1.6 billion over the course of 2023 compared with 2019 – and that figure won’t have gone down much in 2025, given that margins have remained by and large the same.
However, while the CMA’s 2023 market analysis suggests that operational costs weren’t originally a factor in the increased margins, the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA) insists that rises in the National Living Wage, business rates and energy prices, and a surge in forecourt crime are all forcing firms to keep prices high.
