Ofgem has announced changes that will impact the non domestic energy sector.
The Energy Consultants Association (ECA) has responded to these changes, expressing both approval and concerns.
The ECA broadly welcomes the initiatives confirmed by Ofgem but has concerns that some of the new rules don’t offer any value to consumers and that Ofgem remains fixated on small impact solutions when there are much bigger issues they should be dealing with.
Chris Shaw, Chair of the ECA said: “We would always welcome any reforms focussed on helping customers get redress – and its pleasing that most of the reforms are aimed at suppliers who ultimately create that vast majority of consumer complaints.
“However, yet again we see some reforms targeted on brokers which, while in principal should be good news, due to Ofgems failure to properly undertake cost benefit analysis impacts, we see changes like widening ADR which is likely to simply add more cost to end consumers.”
“We at the ECA investigated and reported earlier this year that since Ofgem’s introduction of ADR, the entire scheme was costing businesses more than it awarded in compensation due to a variety of issues including the Energy Ombudsman staff lacking any legal training as well as excessive subscription fees.”
Chris Shaw added: “Ultimately Ofgem need to focus far more attention on much bigger issues that can take cost away from UK business – like unwinding P432, dealing with rogue suppliers, excessive deemed rates, lengthy and complex COT processing times and improving fraud prevention dialogue between suppliers and brokers.
“These are big ticket savings – as opposed to PR driven attacks on brokers like fee disclosure and expanding an ADR scheme that already doesn’t really work effectively, and who fairly universally suppliers also agree the EO isn’t qualified to deal with more complex usage customer complaints.”