Petrol prices have risen to more than £2 a litre in parts of Wales
A care sector boss says she had got an electric scooter to help staff who can't afford the fuel to drive their own cars to clients' homes.
Emma Murray's concerns were voiced the day after petrol prices in Wales broke the £2 a litre barrier amid warnings prices are going to keep increasing.
The average cost of filling a typical family car with petrol could exceed £100 for the first time on Wednesday (June 8). Data firm Experian Catalist said a litre of petrol cost an average of 180.7p on Tuesday.
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That was an increase of 2.2p compared with the previous day. This was the largest daily jump on 17 years, according to the RAC. Look at the reasons why it is so high here.
Care boss Emma, who runs Vale Senior Care in Denbigh, told BBC Radio Wales that she had had some staff coming in crying saying they couldn't afford the fuel in the car.
She said: "Because we work in a rural area, I've been paying bonuses in order to retain staff. I can imagine a couple will think 'I can't work in the domiciliary sector anymore'. Even though I pay the maximum in fuel, it's just not going to work."
Her 10 staff use their own cars to get to their homes. but she had been able to get a local authority grant to get a road-legal electric scooter and electric bike to help cut costs, but she does not see it as a long-term solution.
"It could work in seaside towns and small areas, but in Denbigh the roads are narrow," she said. "It could work in Llandudno on the flat, Rhyl Colwyn Bay, but in Denbigh it's limited. You need to be quite fit and not everyone is confident."
There is some hope that costs could drop soon, however, despite RAC spokesperson Simon Williams telling The Mirror that fuel prices are "fast becoming a national crisis for the country's 32 million car drivers as well as countless businesses." He also said that "While the average price of diesel is heading towards £2 a litre, the cost of wholesale petrol unexpectedly dropped around 5p a litre on Tuesday. If this price is maintained in the coming days it could stem the flow of daily record petrol prices."
Some motorway stations, and rural forecourts, are already charging £2 per litre. Prices are being pushed up due to increased demand for oil alongside additional stresses due to the war in Ukraine.
James Andrews, personal finance expert at Money.co.uk, said: "Consumers are being hit from all sides but nowhere is this as obvious than at the pumps. Petrol prices have surged 36.5% in a year, rising by four times the rate of inflation.
"It's a pace that is obliterating people's disposable income. It both eclipses and exacerbates the wider cost of living crisis, which saw CPI hit 9% in April -- a pace that was already causing sleepless nights over at the Bank of England."