Shell PLC / Hudson Energy FINED ( yet again ) 2023

 Proposal of the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (‘the Authority’) to impose a financial penalty on Shell Energy UK Limited (SEUK), following an investigation into that company relating to matters while under its previous name of Hudson Energy Supply UK Limited (‘HES’) 1 and its compliance with its obligations under Standard Licence Conditions (‘SLCs’) 0A, 7A.1, 7A.8, 7B and 21B.1 of its electricity supply licence. 1. Summary 1.1. This case concerns acts or omissions which, in the opinion of the Authority, constitute contraventions of the above SLCs committed by HES in relation to Non-Domestic Customers supplied under its electricity supply licence. 1.2. From 2015 to July 2020, HES had an arrangement (“the arrangement”) with a third-party (“the third-party”), whereby the third-party acquired customers for HES and then conducted customer facing activities with those customers (including those activities subject of breach in this case). 1.3. Whilst the third-party carried out some of the actions that are the subject of the breaches set out in this document, HES, as licensee, is responsible for the actions of the third-party and the resultant poor treatment of its customers. On this basis HES itself is found in breach of the above SLCs.

A company owned by oil and gas giant Shell has been slapped with a fine by the energy regulator Ofgem, weeks after the communications regulator also fined part of the customer-facing part of the group.

Hudson Energy Supply (HES), a non-domestic market energy supplier which Shell purchased in 2019 as part of its efforts to take on the UK retail energy supply market, must cough up £1.6m after the regulator found it “failed its customers by failing to comply with a number of important licence conditions.”

An investigation by Ofgem opened in July 2020, found a number of breaches, including outsourcing services without supervision, leading to poor provision, and a “serious unjustified overcharging of customers, in one case of £22,500.”

The probe found that on average customers were overcharged by more than £1,800, with some not receiving their money back for seven months.

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