The Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (“the Authority”) has confirmed its decision to impose a financial penalty on Ovo Electricity Limited and Ovo Gas Limited (jointly Ovo Energy Limited) for its failure to comply with SLCs 22C, 25C/0, 27, 28A and 31A of its Electricity and Gas Supply Licences.
SLC 22C requires suppliers to provide information on (among other things) a customer’s estimated annual costs and estimated annual savings.
SLC 25C, which was in force until October 2017, required suppliers to take all reasonable steps to achieve certain standards of conduct and to ensure that the standards were interpreted and applied consistently with the customer objective, which was to treat customers fairly.
SLC 25C has since been modified; our enhanced Standards of Conduct came into force on 10 October 2017 and is now known as SLC 0.
SLC 27 requires suppliers to take all reasonable steps to issue final bills within 6 weeks of a customer leaving supply and also issue corrected final bills (if required) in a timely manner.
SLC 28A requires suppliers to ensure that charges for energy do not exceed the maximum permitted charges under the prepayment price cap.
SLC31A sets out specific obligations concerning the provision of information on bills, statements of account and annual statements.
The Authority made no finding of breach in respect of SLC 26 (Priority Services Register), which was within the scope of this investigation.
The Authority considered it appropriate to impose a financial penalty for these contraventions and issued its Notice of Intention to impose a financial penalty on Ovo Energy Ltd on 29 January 2020. There was one representation made in response to that publication, which has been addressed in the final penalty notice.
The Authority has decided to impose a financial penalty of £1 on Ovo Electricity Limited and £1 on Ovo Gas Limited. This is in addition to £8,876,500 (less £2) that Ovo has agreed to pay in voluntary redress. The redress will be paid into Ofgem’s Voluntary Redress Fund (administered by the Energy Saving Trust) and the money will be used to the benefit of energy consumers.
Further details can be found in the final penalty notice.