At the start of the week, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) “named and shamed” a number of energy companies that had the lowest voucher redemption rates for the Energy Bills Support Scheme (EBSS).
The EBSS provides households with £400 across six months from October 2022, to limit the impact of the surging power prices amongst other cost of living crisis strains. This comes alongside support measures such as the Energy Price Guarantee which aims to cap domestic energy bills.
The vouchers are specific to customers with prepayment meters, a topic that has come under the spotlight due to forced installations. Customers must redeem these to receive the financial aid. If these are not redeemed, then customers are exposed to the volatility of the energy crisis.
The BEIS called out three particular companies for not doing enough to enable voucher redemptions and those with the lowest rates. These include Good Energy, Utilita Energy and Scottish Power.
Current+ reached out to each firm and received a response to the allegations.
Utilita Energy
Utilita Energy expressed concerns over the methods of the investigation into voucher redemption. The firm indicated that it has been phasing out legacy systems such as traditional pay as you go (PAYG) meters for more updated smart PAYG+ variants.
“We have a small number of customers with traditional PAYG meters. Some have yet to redeem their EBSS vouchers – we estimate the figure is less than 2% of the national total – despite our best endeavours,” said a spokesperson from Utilita Energy.
“The real problem here is one of old-fashioned traditional PAYG compared to Smart PAYG+ of which we have 665,000 households – 95% of our PAYG customers – with 1.3 million smart gas electricity meters. Here, we have successfully applied EBSS payments directly onto the meter on more than 2.6 million occasions, with 99.999% success.
“To ensure our customers get all the support that is available to them, we will continue to try and contact uncashed voucher households using the channels open to us – including visiting as many as possible.
“We will also continue to prioritise smart meter installs for traditional PAYG customers, so they can receive financial support direct to their meters in the future.”
Despite this, it is worth noting that Utilita received backlash from Ofgem last year. In late September, Ofgem issued provisional orders to Utilita and Scottish Power for failing to support vulnerable customers.
Utilita had been found of failing to deal with customers, including vulnerable customers, customers on the priority services register (PSR) and customers in debt.
Good Energy
Good Energy had also been identified as another energy company with one of the lowest voucher redemption rates in the UK. This, alongside Scottish Power and Utilita prompted being called out by the BEIS.
Despite this, Good Energy CEO Nigel Pocklington indicated that, much like Utilita, the problems lay in the investigation parameters citing that the firm has a low number of customers on prepayment meters.
“As a supplier with a relatively tiny proportion of prepayment customers, we have been able to go above and beyond in encouraging EBSS voucher redemption.
“We do not install traditional prepayment meters because they are not effective for supporting customers. For the around 350 legacy traditional PPM customers we do have, we have sent multiple email and letter reminders as well as made individual calls.
“Our own up to date figures show our customers’ redemption rates are around 70% — in line with the government’s average. We will continue doing everything we can to make sure customers don’t miss out on this vital support. We would like to see the government doing the same, rather than lashing out at suppliers for the shortcomings of their own scheme.”
Ofgem had previously found Good Energy as having “severe weaknesses” in supporting vulnerable customers as part of its Market Compliance Review in November 2023. Five suppliers had been recognised in having sevre weaknesses including Good Energy, Outfox, So Energy, TruEnergy and Utilita.
Scottish Power
Scottish Power also issued a response when prompted by Current±. According to the firm, there were various issues that had reflected in a “worse” figure for voucher redemptions via the investigation.
A spokesperson for Scottish Power said: “Energy Bill Support credits were issued to all prepayment accounts through a voucher or digital credit on smart meters.
“Our investigation of unclaimed credits identified vacant properties as one of the main reasons for money going unclaimed and we are updating our system to reflect these accounts. When this is factored into our reporting our redemption rate is 74%.”
Much like Utilita, Scottish Power had additionally been called out by Ofgem for not doing enough to support vulnerable households. For Scottish Power, this primarily revolved around the way in which it had set up its debt repayment plans and deals with customers currently struggling to pay energy bills.
