British Gas lost 220,000 customers in first three months of 2016

Parent company Centrica reveals fall in number of domestic accounts, nearly twice total for whole of 2015, at AGM in London

British Gas lost more than 220,000 customer accounts in the first three months of this year, almost double the number for the whole of 2015, as consumers turned away from the big energy providers.

Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, said the number of domestic accounts fell by 224,000 to 14.44m between the end of December and the end of March. British Gas lost 119,000 accounts last year.