NI Regulator to ‘mirror’ CMA remedies

The energy regulator in Northern Ireland is set to “mirror” the Competition and Market Authority’s remedies for the UK market, its chief executive Jenny Pyper has told Utility Week.

Pyper said the regulator was waiting for the CMA’s final report, due in June, before releasing its own recommendations for the Northern Irish market. These arise from a review by Cornwall Energy begun in 2014 into the effectiveness of competition.

Although the recommendations note significant differences between the two markets, Pyper said the CMA probe “is important” to the regulator’s recommendations, and it intends to “mirror some of its remedies.”

She said: “We are a very different market over here, and actually on a whole, what we are doing seems to be working as a majority of Northern Irish customers are very happy.

“The CMA does not extend to this market but it still applies and we have actually held back from launching our recommendations until we have seen what the CMA comes out with as it may give us ideas and there are certainly parts of it that we can relate to, despite being a much smaller market.”

The Northern Irish review found that almost 90 per cent of gas and electricity customers in the province are satisfied with their supplier and 83% of electricity consumers and 84% of gas consumers were aware of their right to choose their provider. However, only around 25 per cent of customers have switched since the introduction of competition in 1996.

Pyper added: “It might be because we are fairly new that energy and gas customers are happy and tend not to switch even though they are aware of their ability to do so, but there are still certainly ways the market can change for the better and improve and increased competition can only be a good thing.”

Read Utility Week’s analysis of the CMA’s provisional remedies here