Solar Powered Complaints
How The Mayor's "Solar Together London" plan isn't doing what it says on the tin, as complaints pile up
Hello,
Just one topic this issue, returning to the Mayor’s ill-fated Solar Together London plan which generated a flood of unhappy customers and misleading claims about vetting contractors, but perhaps not much extra solar electricity.
Solar Powered Problems
Any business that turns 1649 customers into 656 complaints has a problem, but for the Mayor’s Solar Together London plan that’s just the start of the trouble. It’s not really what it seems, it’s been overtaken by events, and looks increasingly irrelevant.
Last August I wrote about problems with the Mayor’s £1.1 million "Solar Together London" plan where Londoners band together to get group discounts on solar panels, coordinated by City Hall using vetted contractors. At first sight it seems a decent idea but it has gone badly wrong, with complaints piling up and now we learn that City Hall isn’t actually vetting the contractors.
A clue to how badly it’s gone wrong came last summer when my colleague Nick Rogers AM put the failure to the Mayor who openly admitted the problem. Unheard of!
Following Nick’s exchange, acting as Chair of the Audit Panel I asked our auditors to investigate.
The audit report revealed that despite claiming that City Hall vets the contractors, they don’t. More on that below.
I discussed this story in last week’s Inside City Hall podcast.
Spiral of Failure
Between August and October last year 1649 installations led to 656 complaints, a staggering 40% complaint rate. Between October and December there were 229 further complaints, with no end in sight.
Most complaints were that no one turns up, scaffolding is not put up or not taken down, and there’s complete radio silence when people try to find out what’s going on. It was this maddening silence that caused the flood of emails into City Hall as people tried desperately to find any live human being who would get back to them.
When I quizzed the team at the Audit Panel it struck me that they’d bitten off more than they could chew. Taking on more customers than they could handle caused a vicious circle as missed appointments and poor communication created frustrated customers, who repeatedly tried to find out what was going on, making even more work for the already-swamped team.
I put it to the Mayor’s team that in future they should limit customers to the number they can competently handle, but they refused. They also refused several Audit recommendations on better processes to handle complaints and problems, arguing that they already have a sound process. You might think that a bit arrogant.
But that’s not the worst of it.
“Rigorous vetting process”?
Back to the contractor vetting, this is what the Solar Together London website says:
(my emphasis)
“With support from local authorities, the Solar Together London scheme will group purchase solar panels at a very competitive price on your behalf and oversee the high-quality installation of them by installers who have passed our rigorous vetting process.”
It still says that on the website today. But this is what the auditors found:
“Under the terms of the concession agreement the GLA are not involved in the appointment of installers and there are limits to the influence and levers that the GLA hold on the programme control of the scheme. The GLA also are not involved in the auction process but are informed of the successful installers after the process has taken place.”
And even worse:
“Installers identified as poor performing are reappointed if they still meet the required vetting and checks undertaken as part of the auction process…”
Which might explain the complaints.
The auction process is how installers bid for the jobs, and the vetting checks are sensible such as whether they’re accredited, have insurance cover, and so on. But a track record of failure must outweigh a piece of paper.
The auditors thought the same, but the Mayor’s team said they can’t do anything until at least July 2023 because all this is fixed in the contract which runs until then. But why did the Mayor’s team sign a contract which hands over all the power to the company they appointed? And why does the website still imply that City Hall is vetting contractors, when it is not?
But that’s not all.
Stuck In The Middleman With You
The Mayor’s “Solar Together London” policy is in effect a marketing campaign for iChoosr, a Dutch company which acts as a middle man or broker.
iChoosr don’t install solar panels, they put potential customers in touch with the companies who do. The Mayor’s publicity campaign leads you to iChoosr who take your details then allocate your job to an installer.
The auditors flagged two problems with this:
iChoosr are the only company in this field, in fact when the plan was agreed they needed an exemption to the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code because there was only one bidder.
Although there’s more than one installer, there aren’t many which is why iChoosr reappoint poor performing installers.
So City Hall can’t just bin the non-performing company and try someone else, because there isn’t anyone else.
Conclusion
This policy is outdated, left behind by a solar industry that’s moved on.
Over the last few years, worldwide demand for solar panels has shot up and now outstrips supply. The latest solar panels are cheaper to make and more efficient, electricity is more expensive, so the hard-nosed case for solar panels now stacks up. Alas, demand for solar power surged just as the pandemic hit global supply chains, leaving everyone waiting for stock. The growth also means there aren’t enough people trained in installation.
This is all good news for solar power, but I don’t see why the Mayor needs to be spending public money advertising an industry that’s already saturated with willing customers.
He’s booking this as money he’s spent reducing London’s carbon emissions and patting himself on the back for it. But is that an honest claim? If he’s funnelling customers into a system that’s going flat out and backlogged with customers, the extra money isn’t creating extra solar installations.
It seems to me he’d be better off shelving this plan and looking for a better way to use this money.
The audit report is available online at this link (PDF file).