Citizens Advice Response to BEIS’s document on Heat Networks: Ensuring Sustained Investment and Protecting Consumers
Citizens Advice welcomes the opportunity to present our views in response of BEIS’s paper on ensuring sustained investment and protecting consumers for heat networks. Citizens Advice has consistently called for heat network consumers to benefit from the same protections as gas and electricity consumers, and are pleased that BEIS is showing the intent to give the consumers these much needed protections.
We particularly welcome that consumer protections have not been considered in isolation. Effective heat networks market framework must tie together an attractive investment proposition with robust consumer protections. Investors need assurances of a stable and desirable product, having strong consumer protections helps to prevent negative experiences in the market.
However, Citizens Advice has concerns over the proposed timeframe for the introductions of these protections. we would hope that the framework for regulation would be brought in swiftly, in anticipation of the greater numbers of consumers moving into properties served by heat networks.