Delivered as an email – October 2024
We hope this message finds you well.
Energy Commission claim heading to the Court of Appeal
Further to our last newsletter of 20 September – see here, we can announce that our energy appeal to the Court of Appeal will be heard on 18-19 March 2025.
You may recently have heard about the landmark Court of Appeal decision in Car Finance Claims – the court found that commission arrangements in motor finance deals sold to consumers were secret and illegal unless the borrower gave express consent. The hidden commission meant consumers paid more for car finance and it is being widely reported that future claims could cost the car finance industry billions of pounds in compensation.
Equally our energy appeal will be a landmark decision in energy commission claims market which, if we are successful, should pave the way of easier / quicker settlement of claims. We expect the Court of Appeal to hand down judgment sometime between April-June 2025.
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
