British Gas owner Centrica has confirmed that the company has lost a further 350,000 customers since the start of the year, as the company’s price rises received large amounts of bad publicity.

Although price hikes were seen across the energy supplyindustry, it was British Gas who attracted possibly the worst attention as they upped their prices by 22% while announcing a profit rise of 11%.

Centrica has its annual general meeting on Friday, and has warned that the residential part of the business will make a loss in 2006 unless either wholesale prices fall or it increases its tariffs even further.

The loss of customers follows large falls in customer numbers in both 2005 and 2004, with industry watchdog Energywatch commenting that British Gas customers were ‘voting with their feet’.

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