Standard content for Members only
To continue reading this article, please login to your Utility Week account, Start 14 day trial or Become a member.
If your organisation already has a corporate membership and you haven’t activated it simply follow the register link below. Check here.
Ofgem has ruled that independent supplier First Utility has now met its obligations for the Warm Homes Discount (WHD) scheme despite missing several deadlines.
Ofgem said First Utility was initially found to be “non-compliant” with the scheme, but the supplier has now met the overall spend obligation despite failing to provide support to vulnerable customers by the specified deadlines on 984 occasions.
The Warm Home Discount annual report for 2014-15 reveals First Utility was accountable for 984 of the 1190 total minor infringements committed by energy suppliers.
A spokesperson for Ofgem E-Serve, the administrator of the WHD scheme, said: “The report states that overall we judged First Utility to be non-compliant. This was the result of First Utility’s cumulative instances of minor non-compliance with the scheme.
“This was accepted by First Utility who we worked with to ensure issues were rectified going into the fifth year of the scheme.”
“Following detailed assessment of First Utility’s support to consumers, we judged that First Utility had met their overall obligation to bill payers in terms of funding.”
As a result of the initial non-compliance First Utility’s additional spend above its obligations for the year will not be carried over into the next compliance period.
Energy suppliers are allowed to carry over 5 per cent of their excess spend into the next obligation period.
Ofgem E-serve said: “Our action as a result of the cumulative issues around non-compliance resulted in that supplier’s excess spending on the WHD scheme being discounted.
“We do not expect to see these infringements repeated in any future scheme years and will monitor what suppliers do to prevent them recurring.”
A spokesperson for First Utility said: We issued cheques to 984 of our warm home discount customers, and unfortunately our cheque issuer dated the cheques with a future date. We cancelled these cheques and reissued with the correct date, but missed the deadline as a result.
“We apologise for for the inconvenience caused and have worked with our cheque issuer to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
Energy suppliers provided £326 million of support to vulnerable consumers in the form of £140 rebates to nearly 2.2 million vulnerable consumers during the period of 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015.
The WHD obligates energy suppliers with 250,000 domestic customers to provide direct and indirect support to fuel poor customers in Great Britain.
In the four years of the scheme to far £1.139 billion of funding has been provided, exceeding the target of £1.13 billion.
Please login or Register to leave a comment.