British Gas, house prices, savings and petrol

British Gas is freezing its standard tariffs for millions of people over winter.

Britain’s biggest energy supplier says the decision – which applies to gas and electricity – will provide peace of mind for more than six million customers, the BBC reports. The move follows similar action from SSE which has said it will cap standard household energy tariffs until April 2017. House prices The BBC reports that annual house price growth has slowed to its lowest rate since January. Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society and second largest mortgage lender, said that prices in November were 4.4 per cent higher than a year earlier, compared with a 4.6 per cent increase in October. It added that prices rose by 0.1 per cent from the month before, with the average cost of a home now £204,947. In other housing news, The Times reports that ‘the Government is making one of the largest investments in the private rented sector in the UK with the aim of building thousands of new homes in the Midlands and the north of England’.