The work & pensions secretary, Thérèse Coffey MP, has written to the chief executive of Ofgem, Jonathan Brearley, to express her concerns about some utility companies withdrawing from the Fuel Direct scheme set up to support customers who are DWP claimants and who are in arrears or are struggling to pay their home energy bills.

The scheme allowed some energy bill payments to be taken direct from benefit payments and, in April this year, the Govt adapted the scheme so that only claimants could either make new payment arrangements or increase the amount of existing payments. However, some utility companies decided that this made the scheme no longer commercially viable for them. The government's view was that utility companies would likely have made requests to the DWP to make significant increases to the payments (and thus, direct deductions from benefits) of around 100,000 claimants currently covered by the scheme with many of those claimants not even being aware that such increased deductions from their benefits had been requested.

The secretary of state wrote in her letter that whilst she understood that energy suppliers would not be supportive of the scheme adaptation "the stance taken by some energy suppliers is unacceptable. Suppliers have an obligation to support customers in payment difficulty" and that suppliers not doing so could be contravening the Supply Licence Conditions (278a) that require provision of payment difficulty support. She also recognised Ofgem's support in ensuring suppliers "fulfil their statutory requirements."