Centrica loses 43,000 business customers The company, like the rest of the Big Six energy suppliers, has come under fire for its profits at a time of rising bills but used its trading update to stress that the tariff increase reflected costs out of its control "to help upgrade the UK's gas and electricity grids and to deliver the UK's carbon reduction targets" as well as higher gas costs. However, Centrica warned that it had lost some 43,000 business supply customers since the end of June, to 931,000. That represents a significant increase in the rate of decline in the division, which lost 25,000 customers in the first six months of the year. It means British gas Business, which had 999,000 customers at the end of 2011, has now lost some 7pc of its customers this year alone. Centrica said: "The weak economy continues to have an adverse impact on our UK business energy supply division, where the competitive environment also remains challenging." Analyst Martin Brough a Deutsche Bank said: "We expect consensus expectations for this unit to drop. We worry that this weakness could continue into 2013. Centrica said it expected profits in its residential services division, which fixes boilers, to "deliver double digit profit growth" mostly due to cost efficiencies.