It comes as an investigation by energy regulator Ofgem found the supplier failed to meet standards required when installing prepayment meters, and that it breached licence conditions designed to protect vulnerable customers.
Up to £70m of energy debt will also be written off as part of the agreement.
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British Gas had previously agreed to provide a £22.4m voluntary support package specifically to support pre-payment meter customers.
The regulator described the investigation as one of the most detailed and complex in its history.
What happened?
Some vulnerable customers who were in energy bill arrears had their homes broken into so that agents acting for the utility company could install a pre-payment meter.
The practice of seeking involuntary installation of prepayment meters took place between February 2018 and February 2023, when it was stopped, having been uncovered by The Times newspaper.
The company, however, had been made aware of meters being installed when not appropriate through an external review in 2018 and an internal audit in 2021, Ofgem found.
"It was clear that some customers who had an involuntary prepayment meter installed were not treated with the care and respect that they deserved," British Gas said on Friday.
"There were also errors in identifying some customers in vulnerable situations who should have been excluded," it added.
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Post Office signed £2.4m PR contract
British Gas has apologised and has since strengthened governance, oversight and safeguards for vulnerable customers, it said.
Chris O'Shea, group chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica, said: "What happened should never have happened, and I am sorry to the prepayment customers who were affected.
Tim Jarvis, chief executive of watchdog Ofgem, said: "It is clear that British Gas fell short in its treatment of an unacceptable number of vulnerable customers who had a prepayment meter installed without consent, and it's right that they've taken action to put things right.
"Because of our action customers will receive a substantial package of redress, compensation and debt write off."
He added: "The installation of prepayment meters under warrant should only be a last resort, with rigorous checks to ensure debt is recovered lawfully, proportionately and safely."
Smart pay as you go meters were a "positive choice for many customers" instead, according to the boss.
Compensation for customers
Some 40,000 customers who had a prepayment meter installed without their permission between 2022 and 2023 are already receiving compensation from suppliers.
While compensation to affected customers has already been paid, more has been agreed for energy users impacted from 2018 to 2021.
British Gas said it would now undertake a comprehensive review of its customer records and provide redress and compensation wherever possible for affected customers.
Customers do not need to take any action and will be contacted directly by British Gas.
Italy's foreign ministry said the group had been exploring underwater caves in the Vaavu Atoll at a depth of around 50 metres (165ft) on Thursday.
It gave no further details about the victims' identities or the cause of the accident, but said all five were Italian nationals and an investigation was under way.
The Italian Embassy in Sri Lanka was working to contact the victims' families and provide consular assistance, the ministry added.
In a statement posted on X, the University of Genoa expressed its "deepest condolences" and said the victims included a marine biology professor and her daughter.
According to Italian media reports, the divers were reported missing at around 1.45pm by the crew of a diving vessel they were travelling on, when the group failed to resurface.
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A large-scale search and rescue operation was launched by the Maldivian Coast Guard and the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF).
"A body has been found among the five divers who dived in Vaavu Atoll," the MNDF said in a statement to Italian news agency ANSA.
"The body was found inside a cave. The other four divers are believed to be inside the same cave, which extends to a depth of approximately 60m."
The state-owned body entered into a nearly four-year agreement for "strategic communications" and "public relations services" in March last year.
It was the same month Lee Castleton, famous for being portrayed in ITV's "Mr Bates" drama, became the first sub-postmaster to launch High Court action against the Post Office and Fujitsu, maker of the faulty Horizon software.
The Post Office contracted DRD Partnership, which says it "promotes and protects clients' reputations at moments of challenge and change", from March 2025 to January 2029 for £2.4m.
DRD representatives were present at a recent High Court hearing on Mr Castleton's case.
The value of this deal was double that of the Post Office's preceding strategic communications contract with reputation managers Lexington Communications, running for four years from July 2022.
Services listed on DRD's website include litigation communications and crisis and reputation management.
The firm also has lower-value public contracts with West Midlands Fire Service and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service, worth £170,000 and £40,000 respectively for far shorter periods of just under seven and just under four months.
Other than these public tenders, the public relations company does not disclose its clients.
But the contract with DRD is just one entered into by the Post Office.
Another is worth £960,000 for PR services such as "executive profiling and reactive media opportunities" and "consumer media positioning and narrative development" with PR agency Boldspace for just under four years, according to the government's tender website.
No Horizon PR work is done by Boldspace.
In total, the combined value of these Post Office communications contracts is £3.36m.
Both Boldspace and DRD declined to comment.
The Post Office also has internal media relations and marketing staff.
A Post Office spokesperson said: "Contracts are openly and transparently published on the government's Find A Tender website."
Defending new cases
It comes as the state-owned entity defends cases related to the Horizon IT scandal in which hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongfully convicted of fraud and wrongful accounting.
Many more racked up large debts, became ill, or suffered a relationship breakdown as they sought to plug the incorrectly generated financial shortfalls. Some died by suicide.
As well as defending Mr Castleton's claim – as a Post Office lawyer argued in a January High Court hearing, "it has a duty to its shareholders to defend" – another Horizon victim is having her High Court case challenged.
Janet Skinner filed her case in December as she sought full redress for her wrongful conviction, having not received a final payment, being offered an insufficient interim sum and being asked for six different expert reports, her solicitor said at the time.
The Post Office is also fighting cases where the Horizon predecessor, called Capture, was used in convictions.
Two such prosecutions have been referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to the Court of Appeal as a potential miscarriage of justice.
Why does it matter?
The money would have been better spent aiding sub-postmasters as the spending was unjustified, according to Simon Goldberg, a solicitor for Lee Castleton and Janet Skinner.
"As an organisation that is owned by the Department of Business and Trade, it is effectively funded by the taxpayer. This means that there is a duty of care to ensure that its expenditure is justified and necessary, neither of which is the case here," Mr Goldberg said.
"Other than when it comes to paying redress to victims of the scandal, [the Post Office] spends money like water."
The money would be better spent on redress or supporting the charities set up to aid sub-postmaster victims and their families, Mr Goldber added.
"That could and would undoubtedly help with reputational issues, but the Post Office seems incapable, on any level, of taking positive measures like this."
So far, the Post Office's PR efforts have been unsuccessful, he said.
"For all the money it spends on crisis PR, the public has not seen any improvement whatsoever in the reputation of the organisation, and speaking from the coalface, the sub-postmaster cohort resents the largesse with which public funds are spent, except on the only deserving cause which could help to right past wrongs – namely, the victims and their families."
A Post Office spokesperson said: "We are an essential service for communities across the UK, and external communications agencies help us to promote the banking, parcel and travel products that our postmasters offer, increasing their relevance and income.
"The Post Office only runs the Horizon Shortfall redress scheme, which has now closed, and as at the end of March, had paid out £917m.
"We have begun a long-term programme of restorative justice for those impacted by the Horizon IT scandal."
How much has been spent?
From January 2025 to late February this year, £313,386.66 was spent on the two companies, according to information obtained via Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation.
Boldspace received £134,517.66 during the period, mostly for content partnerships, social media, and product PR, the Post Office said.
DRD received £178,850.
The contracts, however, are on the lower end of those entered into by the Post Office.
Other recent tenders include a £14.4m three-year contract with one of the so-called big four accountancy firms, KPMG, for forensic data mining.
Another £14.4m four-year contract was entered into between the Post Office and Code Worldwide for customer database management, hosting and maintenance, and campaign management.
Jobs are being cut at the company's head office as part of restructuring and a transformation plan, which includes franchising more than 100 directly managed branches.
That's what outgoing health secretary Wes Streeting said in his resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer.
While it's true that some targets have been met, several milestones due to be achieved by March, including on A&E and cancer treatment waiting times, have not.
Waiting times
The NHS constitution states that 92% of people should be treated within 18 weeks of being referred for treatment. This target hasn't been achieved in over a decade and deteriorated rapidly during the pandemic, when fewer than half of patients were treated within 18 weeks.
Labour promised to get back to the 92% standard by the end of parliament but, in the meantime, set a target to reach 65% by March 2026.
New figures show this was achieved at the national level, but nearly half of trusts (71 of 150) did not.
"It means we are right on track to deliver the fastest reduction in waiting times in the history of the NHS," Streeting said.
Performance improved from 62.6% in February to 65.3% in March to reach the target threshold. There is still some way to go to reach the full 92% target by 2029, however.
Data validation exercises?
The number of appointments on the waiting list fell to 7.11 million in March, a reduction of 1.5% from 7.22 million in February. This was the largest month-on-month reduction outside of the pandemic since 2008.
It may have been helped in part by a surge in "validation" exercises to remove cases that should no longer be on the waiting list, even if the patient has not received NHS care.
Some 17.1% of appointments removed from the waiting list were from this "unreported removal" category, the highest share of administrative removals since February 2024.
Francesca Cavallaro, senior analytical manager at the Health Foundation, told Sky News that meeting the interim waiting times target was an "important milestone", given the scale of the challenge facing the NHS.
"However, this is only one step on the road to recovery towards restoring the 18-week standard after more than a decade of missed targets," she said.
"The levels of unreported waiting list removals in March reflect a relatively high share of total removals, though similar to levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is likely to be partly down to additional validation work being undertaken ahead of the interim targets, raising the broader question of whether the recent pace of improvement is sustainable in the months ahead."
Not finished the job
Other achievements name-checked by the outgoing health secretary include recruiting 2,000 GPs and an improvement in public satisfaction with the NHS, which has risen from 60% to 74.5% since Labour came into office.
He said improvements were down to "investment, modernisation, and the remarkable efforts of staff", though he acknowledged there is "lots more to do".
Uneven performance
While the national waiting times target was met overall, another target was that every trust should have reached a minimum of 60% patients treated within 18 weeks and have improved by five percentage points from a November 2024 baseline, and this was not achieved.
Sixty-eight of 150 trusts did not meet this level of improvement, including in 16 trusts where neither target was achieved.
Additionally, 17 trusts are performing worse now than they were in November 2024.
Search for your trust in the table below.
A&E waiting time targets missed
Reducing waits for emergency care has been a big priority for Streeting's NHS, but while interim targets have been met for planned hospital treatment, they have been missed in A&E.
In March, 76.9% of A&E patients were treated or discharged within four hours, missing the interim target that this should be 78%.
In major departments, just 63.8% of patients were seen within four hours.
The long-term target is that 95% of patients should be seen within the four-hour standard.
Trolley waits worsen
Meanwhile, the situation with "trolley waits", the time patients spend waiting for a hospital bed after a decision to admit, has continued to deteriorate.
This April was the worst April on record for long trolley waits of 12 hours or more, experienced by nearly one in 10 patients after a decision was made to admit them.
2025 was the worst year on record for trolley waits of 12 or more hours, at 554,000. That was more than the total recorded between 2011 and 2022.
Cancer treatment target missed
The latest figures show that 79.4% of cancer patients were diagnosed within four weeks in March - just shy of the interim target to reach 80%.
The time taken for treatment has shown little improvement, however, with just 72.8% of cancer patients treated within two months of urgent referral as of March, missing the target to reach 75% by this point in time.
And while this is the best performance of available data going back to 2022, it remains far from the ultimate target that 85% should be treated within a two-month time frame.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
The Green Party leader's spokesperson told Sky News the day before the elections that he had postal voted in Hackney so that he could visit Wales to campaign there on polling day.
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Mr Polanski publicly told the east London borough's Green candidate Zoe Garbett: "You have my vote."
However, it has now emerged he had never registered to vote - and did not postal vote.
A Green Party spokesperson said there had been some miscommunication in the melee of the elections.
They said he did not register to vote as he was in the process of moving from a houseboat to a shared house, and "fell short of time" to register at his new accommodation.
He also needed more time to register anonymously over security concerns regarding antisemitism and homophobic abuse, they said.
Mr Polanski admitted earlier this week he had failed to pay council tax while living on the houseboat. He apologised for the "unintentional mistake", and said he had taken immediate steps to pay any council tax he owed.
The Green leader initially said he only stayed on the boat "occasionally", and rented a room at another address where council tax was included in the rent.
However, an advert seen by The Times for the sale of the boat posted by his partner said: "We are moving to a house and so will sadly be leaving the gorgeous community behind."
The Green Party said he had lived on the houseboat for just under four years, and that came with "unconventional practical considerations, including whether council tax is included in mooring fees".
They added that Mr Polanski is now in "active conversations" with the police and local authorities about registering to vote anonymously to protect him, as he does not get that from being a London Assembly member or a party leader.
A Green Party spokesperson told Sky News: "Zack was unable to vote. He was in the process of moving, and when that fell through, he moved in as a lodger in rented accommodation.
"He fell short of time to register at the new place, especially given the extra process he would need to go through to register anonymously.
"Zack has recently had increased security concerns after being the target of antisemitic and homophobic abuse."