Recommendation 26

We have reservations about the Government’s proposal to reduce the time before a case can be escalated to the Energy Ombudsman from eight to four weeks. This would likely inflate the volume of cases referred to the Ombudsman, which might slow down the process for consumers to achieve redress and increase consumer bills, given that a high referral rate would increase the fees paid by suppliers, which would likely be recovered via bills. (Conclusion, Paragraph 95)