£11.56 'Goodwill' Gas Refund

Thursday, 25 January 2024 at 11:38

Gas customers will be refunded £11.56 - the standing charge for October - following an outage that left homes without hot water and heating for several days.

Island Energy CEO, Jo Cox, says the refund is out of 'goodwill' and will put around £11.60 in customers' pockets.

"As there is no requirement for energy companies in Jersey to have pre-agreed compensation schemes in place we have been working with our insurance company to ascertain whether we were covered for this event.

Unfortunately, as it was a total loss of supply due to circumstances out of our control, the insurance company has confirmed that it will not be covered."

The outage was caused by a 'rogue code' at the plant at La Collette in October which shut the entire plant down.

Island Energy announced a bill hike of 12% for its Jersey customers last week, with the Jersey Consumer Council questioning its intentions.

Carl Walker, head of the JCC, told us some may see the price rise as the gas company trying to 'recoup' the compensation.

Ms Cox has refuted those claims

"We would have been putting a price increase regardless, we had been planning an increase in line with the market inflation.

We've seen Jersey Electricity do exactly the same thing, we didn't put any increases in throughout 2023, we held off as much as we possibly could."

The refund of the standing charge will be applied next month.

In the UK, gas customers receive mandatory compensation of £60 for the first 24 hours, and £60 for for each following 24 hour period if there is an unplanned interruption to their supply.