Draft Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme Regulations 2018 Draft Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 General Committees

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I just have a couple of points for my right hon. Friend. She will probably be aware that South Thanet is unique in having offshore wind, solar parks and biogas, and from this September we will have a £160 million, 27 MW biomass scheme that burns sweet chestnut. That is an interesting project on the old Pfizer site, which is an enterprise zone. We are pleased about that, and I certainly hope my right hon. Friend will cut the ribbon when it opens.

On the assignment of rights, I see within the guidance that third parties that offer the financing for householders will need to be registered with Ofgem, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and the Consumer Codes Approval Scheme. Can she offer any help as to what registering with Ofgem means? My concern is that the less-than-sophisticated householder could be caught in a financing trap that they would not go into with proper assessment and guidance.

What will Ofgem do in terms of registering those third parties? If it is quasi-financing, which it obviously is, I imagine that the Financial Conduct Authority might be interested in those third parties. It might be that, in practice, it will be traditional financiers that are already FCA-registered, and not new, vanilla schemes. That is just a query that comes into my mind to assist the unsophisticated householder.