We are proud to have developed a rich Code Manager service within a short period of time during mobilisation and in the short few months since go-live. We have encountered - and continue to encounter - challenges, but our capability to collaborate across the elements of the service is developing effectively. We are consistent in our strategy to drive behaviours promoting innovation with a digital focus, empowered and accountable, fundamentally consumer-centric, and cost-efficient in our approach. In the section below, we've set out some recommendations to the RECCo Board for initiatives that may be considered to further the objectives set out within the REC.
Consumer Centric Approach
Our independent consumer advocacy team provides us with a unique perspective on consumer impacts and the issues that they and consumer organisations are facing.
We fully support the RECCo strategy to align elements of the Priority Services Register (PSR). We recently supported a cross-sector initiative to develop a centralised PSR. A data specialist attended a workshop with RECCo to review the proposals and the work required to support a ‘tell it once’ service. We acknowledge that this is not a simple solution and that a number of regulatory, technical and process questions will need to be resolved, which may take multiple years to implement. We fully support the strategy and drive for this work and would like to continue to work with RECCo and stakeholders over the coming years.
Due to the timescales involved, we believe that this may be a multi-year initiative rather than a priority for the next year and it may be prudent to reflect as such within the budget or future iterations of the strategy.
We've recently taken on the Supplier/PCW work completed through a number of workshops. We'll ensure that the best practice and outputs from those workshops are communicated and understood, enabling all interested parties to be in the best possible position for CSS go-live.
We could build on this through a REC stamp of approval/confidence code for PCWs, similar to Ofgem's Confidence Code, building upon the principles agreed by the forum, monitoring for accuracy of information.
We believe that further work relating to impacts on consumers would be beneficial and would be best facilitated through a collaborative consumer group.
This work would be in addition to the current work we undertake within this space. We'd liaise closely with the RECCo strategy team and RECCo Non-Executive Director with a consumer background. This could be a good home for a consumer issues log, which we are aware RECCo has been considering previously, where consumer groups, bodies and REC Parties can engage on relevant topics prevalent in the industry today.
We would support the development of a focused consumer workstream of communications aimed at both the end-user and consumer bodies with a quarterly newsletter and strategy.
We propose a public facing interactive representation of the consumer journey (a website) which allows you to navigate through both happy and unhappy paths including touchpoints and organisations to signpost, information about what can go wrong and how it should be resolved. Video, cartoon, and audio bitesize information can be presented with things like ‘checklists’ when you move into a new property etc.