3. Mr A complains about Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) decision to stop making payments after he joined the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (DRHI). He says it took Ofgem too long to change its original decision.
4. He says as a result he has lost our financially.
5. He is seeking for the tariff lifetime to be extended or a sum of compensation (£4937.38) to be paid for the period of no payments being made by Ofgem.
6. In April 2019, Mr A successfully applied to join Ofgem’s DRHI scheme. However, in June 2020, Ofgem stopped making payments (this was because it discovered that, although Mr A had joined the scheme in April 2019, the property had been unoccupied until May 2020).
7. Mr A contested Ofgem’s decision and, in April 2021 Ofgem agreed to change its decision. This meant that payments would continue if Mr A had a meter installed at the property. It appears that Mr T complied with this request but has encountered further problems (he has discovered the meter was not installed correctly).
8. Mr A complains that Ofgem took too long to vary its original decision and, if it had done so sooner. He would have received the payments sooner.
11. The law says a person needs to make their complaint to a MP within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to a MP after one year, unless we consider there is a good reason to do so. We have discussed this with Mr A to understand the reasons why he could not do so.
12. Mr A has said the issues started on 29 April 2020 and he became aware on 28 July 2020, when he then made a complaint. He contacted his MP in September 2024 who then brought the complaint to our Office.
13. In his complaint form, Mr A said after becoming aware and complaining on 28 July 2020 he did not receive a final response until 25 June 2021. However, he says this did not rectify the matter, so he contacted Ofgem again in November 2021 and continued correspondence until 22 November 2023.
14. He also told our Office that he followed the advice provided by Ofgem and until payments were finally resumed, he was unable to consider the final impact of the process, the time frames of the process and the financial loss due to the process.
15. Mr A told us he emailed Ofgem on 29 August 2024 expressing his dissatisfaction with the time taken to reach a decision. He says he was in dispute with Ofgem about payments and although a decision had been made to continue with DRHI payments once a meter had been fitted, that did not happen, and he then contacted Ofgem who he says were not helpful.
16. Once again, the law states we cannot consider a complaint if it was brought to the attention of a member of parliament 12 months after the date of knowledge of the event occurring. In this instance we have not seen sufficient evidence to apply our discretion and put the time limit to one side in this case.
17. From all the evidence available it is clear Mr A was aware of the delay in Ofgem considering its original decision in 2021 following its review response in June 2021. This was three years before he brought the matter to his MP.
18. He has said that the three-year delay was because he had continued correspondence with Ofgem over the meters but in our view that is a separate matter (and would not have affected a complaint that Ofgem took too long to make its decision). As such, unfortunately, we have seen no reasonable justification to apply our discretion given Mr A could and should have raised the matter with his MP sooner.
19. It is important we are consistent with how we apply our discretion and given this case is several years out of time we will not be taking any further action.
1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about Ofgem. The complaint falls outside of our time limit, and we have decided there is no good reason for us to put our time limit aside to consider it further.
2. We are sorry to learn of the financial impact Mr A says he has experienced and any lasting impact this has had. We appreciate the frustration he has faced when dealing with Ofgem.