Warm Home Discount annual report shows suppliers have exceeded their obligations to support vulnerable consumers
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WHD
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With our help, suppliers have successfully met – and gone beyond – their obligations under the Warm Home Discount (WHD) scheme in year three.
The WHD scheme requires participating suppliers to provide £1.13 billion of support to those in or at risk of fuel poverty over four years. The majority of this support is through rebates to eligible customers, but can also be through third parties who provide assistance such as energy saving advice or help with managing energy debt.
The WHD scheme is administered by Ofgem, through the monitoring and facilitating of supplier compliance with their WHD obligations. Each year we assess whether suppliers have met their obligations and publish our findings as part of an annual report.
Today, we’ve published our third annual report, which outlines the activities carried out by participating suppliers, the outcomes and spending levels they have achieved. The key points include:
- Over 1.8 million customers received a rebate of £135 to help with energy costs in the winter of 2013, with the majority of these rebates paid automatically to eligible pensioners
- Suppliers provided over 250,000 rebates beyond their minimum requirement
- Another half a million customers received other types of support
- In total, customers received support worth £291m, £24m more than the minimum obligation.
Two new suppliers joined the WHD scheme in year three, resulting in support being available to customers of more suppliers than in previous years. We worked closely with these new suppliers to ensure they could provide the correct support to customers under WHD, and are pleased to see they met each of their obligations in their first year of participation.
For year four, we expect another £310m of support to be provided to customers, with one new supplier joining the scheme.