Surge in petrol prices in Sussex with diesel at new high (From The Argus)

Surge in petrol prices in Sussex with diesel at new high

10:20am Thursday 7th March 2013 in News

Surge in petrol prices in Sussex with diesel at new high

Petrol prices are on the rise – with some motorists having to fork out more than £1.50 a litre when filling up.

For the first time ever the price of diesel has passed the landmark price, with some stations charging £1.55.

The recent price surge means the cost of filling up the 70-litre tank of a Ford Mondeo is £4.37 more than at the start of the year.

With the Budget in a couple of weeks threatening to make things worse for motorists, Chancellor George Osborne is now being urged by lobbyists to remove a duty rise of 3p planned for September.

Edmund King, the AA’s president, said the plunging pound and stock market speculators were driving up the cost.

He said: “When the Government considers where it’s going to get new revenue for the next financial year, it shouldn’t knock on drivers’ windows and demand more fuel duty – they have nothing left to give.

“Milking this cash cow has turned into flogging a dead horse.”

According to price comparison site petrolprices.com, the cheapest unleaded within a 20-mile radius of Brighton was 137.7p at Asda superstores and the most expensive was 146.9p. For diesel the respective figures were 142.9p and the most expensive was 155.9p.

John Crowther, of Fiveways School of Motoring, said he believed he was £2,000 worse off due to the petrol increases.

He said: “It’s not affecting my job but it is affecting my income.

“I cannot put the price of my lessons up as I need to be competitive with other driving schools. I think I last put them up when petrol went from 94p to 98p, which was a fair few years ago.”

But Paul Cracknell, of Saltdean-based Strictly Driving motoring school, said: “I keep a careful record of these things and over the last two years it’s not gone up.

“It goes up every now and again and then it goes down.”

A spokesman for Asda, which has some of the cheapest petrol in the county, said: “We always aim to be the first retailer in each part of the country to drop prices when costs are falling and the last to put them up.

“We aim to keep our petrol pricing simple, we pass any savings straight on to the customer – and we don’t use petrol as a loss leader.”

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