Delivered by email – April 2025
A lot has happened since our last update In January.
Energy Commission claim heading to the Court of Appeal
Our appeal claim was heard on 29/30th January and the Court of Appeal delivered its judgment on 24 March which you can read here
In short, our appeal was successful was 5 out of 6 issues and opens up direct claims against energy brokers (where these still exist) and strips away most of the defences used by energy suppliers.
There is still a single issue which proceeds on appeal to the UK’s highest court, The Supreme Court, regarding the threshold of liability against energy suppliers. That appeal is likely to be heard by the end of 2025.
Overlapping issues with Car Finance claims
You may well have read about the appeal in car finance claims which was heard by the Supreme Court on 1-3 April and which you can read about here
The Supreme Court has said that it will deliver its judgment around July 2025. Given significant overlapping issues between our energy commission appeal and the car finances appeal, the Supreme Court’s judgment in July is likely to have a significant impact-in other words the legal framework in these energy commission claims against suppliers may be established in July.
What next?
- If your claim is already litigated in the courts , then it is likely “paused” awaiting the outcome of the Supreme Court’s ruling in car finance appeal in July 2025.
- We are now preparing a number of group claims to be made direct against the following energy brokers as set out below. If your claim falls within any of these groups below then you will have already been contacted by your BC Legal claims handler to prepare your claim, or you will be over the next couple of weeks.
We are also preparing more claims against suppliers and will be targeting the following suppliers and brokers combinations, if this applies to you, your handler will be in touch shortly.Claim Group Number Energy Broker Energy Supplier 1 Northern Gas & Power Ltd TotalEnergies Gas & Power Ltd 2 Northern Gas & Power Ltd Engie Power / Engie Gas Ltd 3 Northern Gas & Power Ltd Npower Ltd 4 UK Direct Business Solutions Ltd TotalEnergies Gas & Power Ltd 5 UK Direct Business Solutions Ltd British Gas, Engie, Npower 6 Bionic Services Ltd Various Suppliers 7 Inenco Ltd Various Suppliers 8 Utility Bidder Various Suppliers Claim Group Number Energy Broker Energy Supplier 10 Utilitywise Plc British Gas 11 Utilitywise Plc Engie Power Ltd / Engie Gas Ltd 12 Utilitywise Plc SSE Energy Ltd
What can I do in the meantime?
Whilst we await the outcome of this landmark appeal there are 3 simple things you can do to help improve prospects of success in your claim as set out in our previous newsletter:
- Find all your brokered energy contracts for all your electricity and gas meters for all your premises / organisations. Go back in time to when you first started using an energy broker. Make sure we know about these contracts. This will maximise the potential value of your claim.
- Make sure you search and preserve all relevant documents in your claim-we refer you to our guide on “Disclosure in your Energy Commission Claim”
- Make sure we know about the key individuals in your organisation who dealt with the energy brokers-if these individuals are soon to leave or retire from your organisation we need to know now so that we can obtain their witness evidence before departure.
Do you know anyone else who may have a claim?
Any type of organisation which used/uses non-domestic electricity and/or gas and used/uses a broker to obtain such supplies potentially has a claim – this includes companies, partnerships, sole traders, charities, places of worship, schools and sports or social clubs.
Claims can be made in respect of energy supplies agreed at least 6-years ago and probably even earlier. Multiple claims can be brought if a range of energy suppliers and energy brokers were used.
If you know any such organisation(s) which may have a claim, please recommend BC Legal and ask them to contact us.
If we accept any claims upon your recommendation, then we are happy to negotiate a reduced “success fee” in your claim by way of a thank you.
Making sure you receive communications from us
We use email to communicate with you, both directly from your claims handler and with more general information such as this email. We have had recent feedback that our newsletter was not received by some of you, as such we ask that you follow these steps to ensure you always get our email messages.
- Please do not mark our emails as spam. This can prevent you from getting key information about you case specifically as well as general emails. If you do not wish to receive specific types of email, please let us know using the energy@bc-legal.co.uk email address or directly through your handler and we will remove you.
- If you have marked previous emails as spam or get an alert, please use the “Not junk/spam” button in your email client
- Add the domain “bc-legal.co.uk” to your safe senders / domain whitelist. This action may need be performed by your network administrator but will guarantee you continue to receive our emails.
We hope you find this useful but if you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Best regards
The Energy Team
