Just £25 million a year. That’s the average financial penalty energy suppliers in the UK have faced over the last six years – not per offence, but in total.
In that time, firms have collectively paid just £152 million in fines and redress for breaking licence conditions. The breaches? Overcharging customers. Mishandling complaints. Failing the vulnerable. The basics, in other words.
Now consider this: the UK energy market is worth around £80 billion a year. These fines equate to just 0.03%. Not even a rounding error. For most suppliers, that’s barely lunch money.
So what message does this send?
That breaching licence conditions – even when it leads to real harm – barely registers on the balance sheet. That regulators are more likely to hand out a press release than a real consequence. And that consumers, particularly vulnerable ones, are left to pick up the pieces while suppliers move on with business as usual.
Where Is Ofgem?
Ofgem’s role is to protect consumers. But these numbers tell a different story.
This isn’t a case of one rogue supplier slipping through the cracks – it’s a pattern. A system where energy firms can breach their responsibilities repeatedly and face almost no meaningful consequences. Fines that don’t scale with damage. Redress that feels more like PR than justice. Enforcement that arrives months – or years – too late.
At what point does regulation become complicity?
It Shouldn’t Be This Easy to Fail People
This level of accountability – or lack of it – would be laughable in any other essential service. Imagine a bank, a hospital, or a transport operator treating systemic failure as a minor operational cost. It wouldn’t fly. But in energy, it’s become normalised.
And it’s not just an industry issue. It’s a policy one. Because as long as the consequences of failure remain this low, the incentives to change — to genuinely serve customers better — are even lower.
What we need isn’t just more fines. We need enforcement with teeth. Transparency by default. And a regulator willing to use every tool in the box — not just the ones that make the headlines.
Source: Figures and context from The Independent (May 2025): Energy firms paid out £152 million to vulnerable customers over past six years