Motor group RAC has called on the UK’s ‘big four’ supermarkets to offer some clarity following findings that forecourt petrol prices are at least 5p per litre too high.
Based on wholesale prices of roughly 113p per litre of petrol last week, RAC argued the UK average price of 155.33p is simply too high.
“We’re now calling on the big four supermarkets, which lead the retail market by virtue of the fact they sell around half of all the fuel bought by drivers, to explain their steadfast refusal to cut prices to fairer levels,” spokesperson Simon Williams said.
Retail margins stood at an average of 3.4p per litre of petrol in 2019, RAC said, but have risen to 7p this year and even further to 14p throughout October.
“We badly need the government to [...] take action against big retailers that don’t reflect downward movements in the wholesale market,” the group said.
This could be done through the introduction of a price monitoring body with enforcement powers, RAC added, citing recommendations by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.
Though some retailers have begun publishing real-time pump prices ahead of the move becoming mandatory in the UK, RAC argued this wasn’t enough since the rocket and feather method of hiking prices on wholesale market changes faster than reducing them still seems commonplace.