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People & Opinion Utility Week community UTILITY WEEK | 8TH - 14TH JULY 2016 | 7 It is ten years since the Energy Ombudsman was created, and in that time it has received more than 160,000 complaints about the energy companies. The majority of those (130,000) have been received in the past three and a half years alone, although there does appear to be a reduction in 2016. So far this year, the biggest problem for consumers has been billing issues, which have accounted for 85 per cent of complaints. Problems with transfers have generated 8 per cent of complaints and sales are responsible for a further 2 per cent, although both have dropped in recent years. Commenting on the tenyear anniversary, chief ombuds man Lewis Shand Smith said: Ten years of the Energy Ombudsman "Since we launched the Energy Ombudsman a decade ago, we have received more than 160,000 complaints. Our job is to take on individual consumer complaints about energy companies – which the companies themselves cannot agree upon – but we've also worked with many different organisations over the years to try and improve complaint han dling across the energy industry. I'm pleased to see that aer all our work there does seem to be a small reduction in complaints this year. "There is still more work to be done, and we would like to see all companies signing up to the new Energy Switch Guarantee, which should give consumers the confidence to switch suppliers. Every year, many customers attempting to cut their energy costs suf fer problems switching to a cheaper provider, and energy companies who sign up for the service commit to working together to address concerns quickly. Consumers also have the assurance that if something does go wrong; the Energy Ombudsman is here to help." McNeal joins Offshore Catapult board The Offshore Renew- able Energy Cata- pult has appointed RenewableUK chief executive Hugh McNeal to its board as a non-executive director. He has held various senior low-carbon related roles, including his previous post as director of change at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Citizens Advice names director of energy Citizens Advice has appointed Victoria MacGregor as its new director of energy. She will be responsible for commissioning research into the market, publishing data on energy suppliers' performance and leading the group's energy policy work for consumers. MacGregor previously spent 12 years at EDF Energy as head of public affairs before her role as chief executive of Citizens Advice Dacorum in Hertfordshire. Reckless to chair Welsh climate change committee The Welsh Assem- bly's Climate Change, Environ- ment and Rural Affairs committee will be chaired by UKIP AM and climate change sceptic Mark Reckless under a cross-party deal. Energy Institute president The Energy Institute has appointed four vice-presidents, as well as naming Malcolm Brinded its president-elect. Brinded joined the institute's council in 2013 and will succeed Jim Skea in 2017 for a two-year term. Brinded was the main board executive direc- tor of Royal Dutch Shell for a decade until his retirement in 2012. APPOINTMENTS "It would be a tragedy, in both France and the UK, if all this work and the extraordinary opportunities it provides were to be lost." A letter from four trade unions – GMB, Unite, UCATT and Prospect – to the chief executive of EDF Energy, Vincent de Rivaz, as the French energy giant is poised to make the 'final investment decision' for the Hinkley Point plant. See p13 Where are we now? The markets are integrated Shepherd and Wedderburn partners Gordon Downie and John Grady assess the impact of the vote to leave the EU. The UK's energy markets are connected to the EU even though there is no single EU electricity and gas market. Electricity markets are physically connected by interconnectors from Britain to France, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland (ROI), and also via the Moyle Interconnector and the interconnectors between North- ern Ireland (NI) and ROI. The gas market is linked with interconnectors to Belgium, the Netherlands, ROI and between ROI and NI. The integration is not just physical. There is signifi- cant European investment in the UK by European energy groups, major cross-UK/NI/ROI investment by SSE, Cen- trica and ESB, and much of the energy market is global. It follows that this is not an area where the 27 remain- ing member states should be "tough" with the UK. If they are, they may harm their own significant investments in the UK energy industry. Disrupting the current energy arrangements may significantly harm investor confi- dence not just in the UK, but in Europe as a whole. To read the full article, visit: http://bit.ly/292w0kC 5% Only 5 per cent of consumers who could bring an energy complaint to the Energy Ombudsman actually do, according to regulator Ofgem.