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A fresh wave of energy suppliers could collapse this winter as one risks going bust ‘imminently’, the British Gas boss has warned . Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of British Gas parent company Centrica, said he is “very worried” there could be a repeat of the energy market chaos of 2021 and 2022. The Centrica boss told the Mail on Sunday he feared at least one small supplier will collapse “imminently”. “There is a real risk it is happening again,” he said. “I don’t want to say how worried I am on a scale from one to ten but I am very worried. I am worried enough to be, you know, making a point. READ MORE Thousands of Blue Badge holders issued update over free bus travel “I warned about this in the past and now I just see the same thing happening again. I just think it’s a crying shame and customers deserve better.” “There was a failure of regulation and consumers picked up the tab,” Mr O’Shea said. “I wrote to the regulator three times before the energy market imploded telling them I was very concerned some suppliers were going to collapse. The regulator did not act on that. Did I get any response? No. “It is a systemic risk to the energy retail market if companies are undercapitalised and you allow them to take on more customers.” Mr O’Shea said: “How can they have been taking so many extra staff, and seen their budget go up so much and they’re still making the same mistakes they did three or four years ago?” It comes asn an energy supplier could reportedly go bust ‘within days’ after building up ‘huge debts’. Tomato Energy, which was banned from taking on new customers in April this year after racking up £3million in debt, is said to have filed for an administrator to take over. When a company files a notice of intent to appoint an administrator, it usually means it has 10 days to sort things out before it officially goes bust.
