Legislation

The Government has passed legislation requiring all suppliers to replace both Electricity and Gas meters with automatic meters for all (but the smallest) businesses by 6th April 2010. It might sound a long way away, but they will have to change 200,000 meters.

Guess who pays? The government has allowed suppliers to pass on all the costs to businesses. This will be either through your supply contract (much the same as it is for most businesses at the moment) or a separate AMR Metering contract. This will inevitably cause some confusion when Renewing or changing your Gas and Electricity supply contracts; the business or whoever looks after your Energy Supply arrangements will generally be able to assist in this area. This information really belongs to the business and so you can sort out all your own metering arrangements and not just keep paying the supplier.

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Looks like some good news to come out of The Queen’s Presentation to the Nation. Further to some of our comments last month (see Pirates & Energy Companies) about legislation appearing on the horizon, sailing to the rescue of not only Consumers but Business as well, looks like there will be real regulations in place. Not only that, finally, maybe OFGEM will get some teeth. The general contempt with which much of the supplier base treats businesses may be about to change.

FIND OUT MORE….

The lawlessness and lack of Government commitment has allowed pirates to flourish and regularly hijack sensible businesses already battling against the downturn – and I don’t mean off the Somalian coast. Not unreasonably many businesses today can scarcely comprehend the disingenuous and underhand behaviour of the UK’s Energy Companies. Against a background of wholesale energy costs much lower than the peaks of last year, do we see these reduced costs passed onto businesses? No.

READ MORE ABOUT THOSE DASTARDLY PIRATES

In an effort to assist and, where possible, protect small businesses and vunerable consumers paying increasing energy costs, Ofgem have imposed a set of guidelines for energy suppliers. The Ofgem press release is attached below but a brief summary of these changes are as follows:

1. New requirements on written estimates following visits from face-to-face salespeople will come into force on 18 January 2010. Essentially, this would put an end to Contracts being signed that don’t match what was ‘promised’.

2. Doubling the threshold of debt a customer can carry and still switch supplier to £200 will come into force on 18 January 2010. This reduces the practical obstacle that has delayed many clients in the transfer process.

3. Further clarity in printed billing information [via PDF or post] from suppliers and the production of annual statements to customers if these are not already in existance from July 2010. This provides improved billing management.

4. Requirement for the six big energy companies to show more openess regarding their margins from the business community in these difficult financial times. This should enable businesses to see to what extent they are being exploited within the market.

Ofgem Assistance for SME and Consumers Press Release PDF