Regulate TPIs and implement energy price caps for small firms, urges FSB

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closedIntervention on energy prices should be extended to small businesses and third party intermediaries must be properly regulated, the Federation of Small Businesses has urged government.

In an election manifesto, the FSB said small businesses “should not have to subsidise the cost of policies to reduce bills for domestic consumers”.

It called for price caps to be extended to the micro business sector, which, Ofgem research has found, are most likely to be paying over the odds for their energy through rollover contracts.

The FSB said while third party intermediaries could help smaller firms navigate the market, “many small business owners will not use a TPI because of a lack of trust or confidence in the industry”. The next government should “work with the industry to regulate TPIs to agree minimum standards, and all energy suppliers should be encouraged to only work with TPIs that are signed up to these standards”, stated the lobby group.

It called for policymakers to get on with implementing remedies proposed by the CMA Energy Market Investigation relating to small business customers, including creating transparent and comparable tariffs and seeing the end of unfair auto-rollover contracts.

See the FSB’s manifesto here.

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