Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem)

4. Mr X complains about the service he received from Ofgem between 2 May 2025 and 19 September 2025. He complains that Ofgem is insisting that he repay £33,174.48 in RHI payments, despite the fact he says he did not benefit from the payments

5. Mr X told us that this has had a major impact on his health. He has been left having difficulty sleeping, and this has severely affected his ability to do his job. He is self-employed, so is not in a position to take time off work and is having to ask family members for support.

6. Mr X does not believe he should be fully liable for the repayments, and by bringing the complaint to PHSO he wants us to recommend that he does not have to repay the sum he is being asked to.

7. In 2017, Mr X was approached by a company offering to install free biomass boilers, and informed that he could apply for the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme from Ofgem. This is a UK government scheme designed to encourage the adoption of renewable heating technologies by providing a financial incentive to households, businesses and communities.

8. Mr X says he followed the instructions from the company in obtaining an energy performance certificate (EPC), which is required for the scheme, and the company then completed and submitted the application for him.

9. Ofgem requested an audit in 2024 and informed Mr X that he does not meet the criteria for the scheme. Following this it instructed him to repay all the payments previously made, £33,174.48 in total. Mr X says he has provided evidence to show that while the RHI payments were made to him, he then passed these on to the company, which has since gone into receivership. He maintains that he never benefited from the payments and has had none of the money himself. However, Ofgem is insisting that he must make payment.

RHI Repayments

12. Mr X complains that Ofgem is insisting that he repay £33,174.48 in RHI payments. He maintains that he did not benefit from the payments as they were simply passed on by him to the third-party company that installed the boiler, and that the original application was completed correctly to the best of his knowledge.

13. Mr X asked for a review of the original decision on 25 May 2025, and Ofgem provided its review response on 19 September 2025.

14. Ofgem explained that it was upholding its original decision because the energy performance certificate (EPC) used to apply to the scheme was incorrect.

15. The EPC included an adjoining portion of the property which has a different heating system. Ofgem maintains that this is not an accurate reflection of Mr X’s property, and that there was a higher heat demand than the application had stated.

16. Ofgem carried out a site audit on 6 May 2024, and informed Mr X of the result of this on 12 June 2024. It informed Mr X that the audit had noted significant differences between the EPC used to apply for the scheme (from 2017), and the EPC completed before it.

17. Ofgem explained that RHI support payments are based on the heat demand within an EPC. The key reason, according to Ofgem, that it believes the information was incorrect was the fact that the 2017 EPC had a much larger floor area than the previous EPC. Ofgem says it considered that the EPC used to apply for the scheme may not be accurate, and asked Mr X to provide a new one.

18. On 26 July 2024 Mr X provided Ofgem with further details about the property. He confirmed that it has two pellet boilers, each heating a separate section of the house. One section of the house is rented out and is not always occupied.

19. On 12 August 2024 Ofgem again requested a new EPC, and on 22 August, Mr X sent Ofgem links to two EPCs that had been completed on the properties. He explained that the EPC assessor had completed two because each section of the house has a separate heating system.

20. One EPC matched the address on the RHI accreditation (this will be referred to as Address 1), the other (Address 2) was for the other section. The 2024 EPC for Address 1 showed a lower floor area than the 2017 one.

21. Ofgem notes that the 2024 EPC contained a recommendation to increase loft insulation. It explained that under the eligibility rules of the scheme, an EPC cannot include such a recommendation. Because of this, on 24 January 2025, Ofgem asked Mr X to get a new EPC without such a recommendation.

22. On 16 April 2025, Mr X informed Ofgem he had installed the insulation, and provided a new EPC (the 2025 EPC) that contained no recommendation. Ofgem says this EPC listed the same floor area as the 2024 EPC (lower than the 2017 EPC used to apply to the scheme).

23. On 2 May 2025 Ofgem decided that the 2017 EPC (used to apply to the scheme) was inaccurate. If decided that the 2025 EPC was the most accurate and should have been used to calculate the payments. This reduced Mr X’s quarterly payments and led Ofgem to decide he had received payments he was not entitled to.

24. Before we decide if we should conduct a detailed investigation of a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the organisation has got something wrong. We do this by comparing what should have happened with what did happen. We have done this and have not found any indications that something has gone wrong.

25. We can see that in his review request, Mr X had raised several points to Ofgem:

• The 2017 EPC was incorrect, and his property was a single house that was split but connected via an internal door. Both parts of the house had their own heating systems. The house had a single council tax bill. He felt this meant the 2017 EPC accurately represented the property.

• The 2024 EPCs were not an accurate representation of the property. Although he did not believe it was correct for Ofgem to get two separate EPCs, he did not question this because he was trying to comply and complete the audit process quickly.

• There was no loft insulation recommendation in the 2017 EPC, and he installed this after Ofgem requested he do so (as required by the 2024 EPC).

• He has always given correct information to EPC assessors. He did not gain financially or otherwise as a result of providing incorrect information.

• The only change to the property that had been made was the insulation. He therefore did not understand why the annual payment has been reduced so significantly.

• He entered an agreement with a company who paid for the boilers and would recoup this cost through RHI payments. They guided him to provide details on the application.

• The RHI payments were sent by him to the company meaning he did not gain financially as a result of any inadvertent misrepresentation.

• The overpayment is a significant amount, and beyond his current means. Even on a repayment plan, this will have a detrimental impact on his future.

26. We can see that Ofgem acknowledges that Mr X feels the 2017 EPC is accurate and that both sections of the property are covered by one council tax bill.

27. Despite this, Ofgem disagreed that the 2017 EPC accurately reflected the relevant property for RHI purposes because it included both sections of the house.

28. We can see that Mr X has advised that the two sections are heated separately, and that one is rented out and not always occupied/heated.

29. The Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme Regulations support Ofgem’s position that the EPC used for DRHI purposes must accurately reflect the relevant domestic property and its heat demand. In this case, Ofgem considered the 2017 EPC did not do so because it included a separately used, and separately heated, part of the property. The regulations also require the EPC to include “a recommendation report which does not recommend that loft insulation or cavity wall insulation be installed.”

30. Domestic RHI funding is intended for heat use within a domestic property, which must be occupied. Ofgem’s position is that basing payments on an EPC that includes a separately used and heated portion of the property has increased the recorded heat demand. It is for this reason that Ofgem said payments should be based the 2025 EPC, which it considers to be the more accurate representation of the property.

31. We can see that Ofgem considered the evidence provided by Mr X showing that he passed the payments to the installation company throughout his time on the scheme. Ofgem also acknowledged he did not financially benefit from the error.

32. However, the issue for Ofgem was not whether Mr X acted deliberately or personally benefited. The issue was whether he received payments calculated on information that Ofgem later found was inaccurate. Ofgem made the payments to Mr X, and it is not responsible for where those payments went afterwards. Ofgem would have no route to recover payments from the installation company because it did not make the payments to that company.

33. There appears to be nothing to indicate that Mr X deliberately did anything wrong when applying for the RHI scheme. However, under the scheme rules, it was his responsibility to ensure the application information was accurate. It was not for Ofgem to determine at the time of application who had completed the form or whether the information provided was correct.

34. We appreciate that it appears that through no fault of his own Mr X has found himself in a very difficult and distressing situation, but we cannot see anything to indicate that this is down to any failings, maladministration or service failure on the part of Ofgem.

35. With this in mind, we must end consideration of this complaint here.

1. We have carefully considered Mr X’s complaint about The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem).

2. We would like to thank Mr X for bringing this matter to our attention and recognise that this has been a very distressing process for him.

3. We have decided to take no further action on Mr X’s complaint. This is because we saw no indications of maladministration in Ofgem’s decision to seek repayment of money paid to him in respect of its Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (DRHI) scheme