Refreshing our Consumer Vulnerability Strategy

Summary

Our definition of vulnerability is broad. This is because vulnerability can have many causes and is sometimes temporary.

Some people suggest our definition could be more specific. Others think it should be broader to include other types of vulnerability, such as financial vulnerability.

What we want to do

We want to keep our current definition of vulnerability.

Details

We believe that energy companies must try to identify and support consumers in vulnerable situations, even if that is challenging. They should also make it easy for consumers to tell them about any issues.

We defined vulnerability when we published our first vulnerability strategy in 2013. We kept the same definition in our latest strategy, published in 2019.

Some people have said we should update our definition and include financial vulnerability. We think that working on specific issues, such as energy affordability, is a better way of looking at financial vulnerability.

We believe that other work will be enough to influence the right company behaviours. Read more about this work in the Consumer Vulnerability section of the consultation paper (PDF 572 KB).

Our main focus is to achieve positive outcomes for consumers in vulnerable situations. These outcomes are described later in this survey.