Delivering high quality heat networks and driving up standards is essential to achieving the government’s objectives for resilient heat supply for communities up and down the country, addressing fuel poverty and ensuring a good return on government investment.

Comprehensive regulation is vital to building customer trust in heat networks that will allow the market to continue to grow and deliver the benefits of sustainable heat supply more widely. This is particularly important in a market of natural monopolies where customers often have little choice.

Strong foundations

Heat Trust is already widely recognised as the key consumer champion in the heat network market, and consumer surveys show that Heat Trust standards have already had a positive impact on the market.

We have unsurpassed collective knowledge of this complex, fledgling industry and have been putting in place the foundations of the bespoke, robust regulations that will protect customers while allowing the market to flourish in the future. This is an essential part of the journey towards regulation – but just the first step.

Unique perspective

As experts in consumer protection, we are uniquely qualified to bring an objective customer perspective to the conversation between government and the industry about impending regulation.

Heat Trust is the only heat network code of conduct that is consistent with gas and electricity market standards, has an independent committee to oversee industry standards, uses audits to check compliance and publishes performance data each year on complaints and outages.

Proven approach

Since its inception in 2015, all major energy service companies (ESCOs) have registered sites with Heat Trust. We have also launched the first and only publicly available Heat Cost Calculator, a critical instrument for government and consumers in assessing value in the market.

Read Newsletter - Spring/ Summer 2019