Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to raise awareness of (a) firms pretending to be authorised Green Deal providers and (b) the means available to secure redress against such firms.

The Green Deal Oversight and Registration Body (GD ORB) are responsible for administrating the Green Deal Code of Practice (CoP) on behalf of the Secretary of State. As part of their monitoring and compliance functions the GD ORB carry out regular website sweeps to ensure that non-authorised organisations are not bringing the Green Deal into disrepute, this includes the unauthorised use of the Green Deal quality mark.

Any non-authorised organisations found to be in breach of the CoP are contacted by the GD ORB who advise that continued misuse of the Green Deal quality mark will be referred to the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards Service who may take further action against the organisation, such as court procedures. Further action that could be taken includes requesting that internet search websites remove the organisation’s paid-for search advertisements when those advertisements link directly to a page on their website that hosts non-compliant marketing communication.

Consumers who have concerns about any dealings with non-authorised organisations should in the first instance contact Citizens Advice.