Scottish Power to Take on 74,000 Yorkshire Energy Customers

Ofgem has appointed large provider Scottish Power as the Supplier of Last Resort (SoLR) for failed Yorkshire Energy.

The Leeds-based Yorkshire Energy announced last week that it was exiting the market and entering administration. It supplied 74,000 households and a small number of businesses.

The regulator’s safety net guaranteed continued supply for those customers and through a competitive process selected a Scottish Power to take over the accounts.

Ofgem said it got “the best deal possible for customers” and that Scottish Power is offering a “competitive tariff.”

The transfer to Scottish Power, one of the now-defunct Big Six, began yesterday 6 December. Yorkshire Energy customers are urged to take a meter reading and wait until they are contacted by Scottish Power to attempt to switch supplier.

The outstanding balances of existing and former domestic Yorkshire Energy customers will be protected, with Scottish Power absorbing a “significant portion of the costs.” When selecting a Supplier of Last Resort, Ofgem prefers suppliers which will honour credit balances.

But as we’ve seen with other suppliers, Scottish Power may later claim some money for the costs of honouring these credit balances and migrating the accounts. This means some of the cost of Yorkshire Energy’s failure may eventually be passed onto customers.

Philippa Pickford, Ofgem’s director of retail, said: “I am pleased to announce we have appointed Scottish Power for the customers of Yorkshire Energy. Their energy supply will continue as normal and domestic customer credit balances will be honoured.

“Scottish Power will be in contact with customers over the coming days with further information. Once the transfer has been completed, customers can shop around for a better deal if they wish to.”

Yorkshire Energy is the fourth supplier to fail this year, following the collapse of GnERGY in March, Go Effortless Energy in September and Tonik Energy in October. Scottish Power also won the Supplier of Last Resort process for Tonik Energy and took on 130,000 stranded customers.

In total, 215,500 domestic customers have been stranded by the failure of their supplier this year.