Britain’s largest energy retailer has confirmed it is no longer a member of a scheme designed to drive higher standards around the switching process, Utility Week can reveal.
Signatories for the Energy Switch Guarantee (ESG) commit to achieving certain standards and targets, such as ensuring switches are completed within five working days or less.
In the latest results for the scheme, covering Q4 2022, British Gas is still listed on the table of signatories but there are no results for the retailer. This is in contrast to Q3 2022 in which the Centrica-owned supplier was shown to have missed its target for 98% of switches completed in 21 days or less.
The company has since confirmed it is no longer part of the ESG, although it has not yet said why.
A Centrica spokesperson said “Switching is important to the energy market and we know how much customers appreciate a good switching experience.
“We remain committed to continuing to switch customers quickly, accurately and seamlessly. We are still measured on switching speed as it is a licence requirement and we report switching performance via the Citizen’s Advice Ratings tool.”
British Gas is not the only large supplier which is not listed as a signatory of the scheme. Scottish Power’s name is also absent from the ESG’s website, as is Ovo Energy’s.
Utility Week has contacted Scottish Power for comment but has received no response at the time of publication.
As reported earlier this week, the latest switching results, covering Q4 2022, show that Eon, Octopus Energy and Shell all had shortcomings.
Eon was significantly below the target of 98% of switches completed in five working days or less, achieving just 75.6%. It also failed to hit 90% of credit refunds issued within five working days or less after the final bill, achieving 80.6%.
Consequently, Eon apologised for its slow performance on switching customers and issuing credit refunds.
According to the latest figures by Energy UK, published yesterday (12 April), 175,334 customers switched to a new electricity supplier in March this year.
This is a month-on-month increase of more than 26,500 and up by 62% compared with the same period last year.