northlincs.gov.uk

62                (14) COLLECTIVE SWITCHING SCHEME – The Director of Places submitted a report seeking approval to proceed with the promotion of collective switching using iChooser as the facilitator.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change wrote to all councils in 2012 encouraging them to lead and facilitate community energy switching.

iChooser was the UK’s leading provider and was currently working with a number of councils.  As an innovative new project there were few alternative models to compare and iChooser was an exemplar in their field.

Many people considered that they were paying too much for energy, and rising fuel bills could be a real concern.  Some people had been reluctant to switch suppliers because they were not sure how to, or they did not have the time to compare the different tariffs.  Collective switching made it safe and easy to switch.

Collective switching offered households an opportunity to sign up to a scheme that allowed an intermediary to negotiate with energy companies on their behalf in order to secure the householder a discounted energy price.  There was a process of registration for anyone who was interested in switching gas and electricity suppliers.  This was managed by a council (or other organisation) and anyone living within or outside the council boundary could sign up.

Resolved – (a) That the proposal to proceed with the promotion of the collective switching scheme be approved, and (b) that the scheme be reviewed in six months time, and a progress report be submitted to the Cabinet Member at that point.

Note: Reports are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and therefore require a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site).

Where there is no report this is because it is exempt, as it contains information which is considered to be of a confidential nature, as detailed in the Local Government (Access to Information) Act.