The consumer engagement poll, completed by Ipsos Mori, reveals that consumers who have not switched and said they are happy with their current supplier has fallen by 23 percentage points (from 78 per cent), to 55 per cent.
This is tallied with a growing distrust of the energy supplier to be open and honest in their dealings with consumers. This has grown to 43 per cent, up by four percentage points, and a fall in trust levels of five per cent (to 29 per cent).
The proportion of consumers who switched their gas supplier in the previous year fell for the fourth consecutive year (by 2 per cent to 11 per cent), while electricity saw a fall for a fifth successive year (down 2 per cent to 12 per cent).
Low switching rates were noted for black and minority ethnic groups, for standard credit and pre-payment meter consumers, for those in rented accommodation, and the over-65 age group.
Consumers were evenly split regarding the perceived difficulty of comparing tariffs with 37 per cent saying they found it easy and the same amount saying they found it difficult.
The main reasons for finding comparing tariffs difficult were that there are too many tariffs (63 per cent), and a lack of standardised information to allow like-for-like comparison.
The survey also found that rural consumers are more likely to have switched their energy supplier than urban customers.
However, despite these falls in the number of switches made, the number of consumers saying they had “ever switched” is 38 per cent – up one point for gas (from 37 per cent) and three points for electricity (from 35 per cent).