British Gas to pay £9.5m in compensation to customers

British Gas, owned by Centrica, has been charged with a penalty of £9.5m after its new IT system caused business customers to face problems with registration and billing, according to energy regulator Ofgem.

Tens of thousands of business customers were given inaccurate and delayed bills after the company implemented a new £40m computer system in 2014.

Over 6,000 new business customers also had difficulty in registering with the supplier and there was insufficient staff to deal with the complaints.

British gas initially compensated some customers and reported the problems to the regulator themselves.

It has since hired 350 extra staff to handle the backlog of complaints and will now pay £9.5m to micro business customers and payments to the Money Advice Trust which runs the Business Debtline.

Gab Barbaro, managing director of British Gas Business, said: "We invested in a new billing system so we could improve the service we provide to our business customers.

"At the time, this was a major undertaking - merging nearly 100 different systems into one. It didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked so we reported this to Ofgem as a priority.

"We have restored a very good quality of customer service, and more and more of our customers are going online to use the new billing system. I'd like to apologise to our business customers for any inconvenience caused when we were implementing the system."

Ofgem chief executive, Dermot Nolan, said: "Ofgem welcomes suppliers investing in new systems and recognises that this can be challenging. However, the £9.5m payment also sends a strong reminder to all energy companies that they must treat consumers fairly at all times, including while new systems are put in place."

“Many existing business customers were left without accurate bills, causing significant concern. New customers were delayed from switching to the supplier, potentially costing them money by leaving them on a more expensive deal with another supplier,” he said.

Centrica’s share price fell 0.70% to 225.50p at the close on Tuesday.