Compliance Area outcomes

RECC’s Annual report includes an explanation of the Code’s monitoring strategy and of the 10 Key Compliance Areas under which RECC records the results of:

• a rolling Consumer Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ)
• compliance audits of members and
• consumer complaints.

The current analysis presents the monitoring results for each of these elements separately (as set out in RECC’s Annual Report). It then brings these results together, along with some additional data, to show the performance overall against each Compliance Area.

The 10 Key Compliance Areas

CA1: Awareness of consumer protection / RECC (including staff training)
CA2: Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS)
CA3: Marketing and selling
CA4: Estimates/quotes, particularly performance estimates and financial incentive
CA5: Finance agreements
CA6: Contracts and cancellation rights
CA7: Taking and protection of deposits and advanced payments
CA8: Completing the installation
CA9: After –sales (guarantees, workmanship warranties and warranty protection, after sales support: customer service)
CA10: Disputes numbers, handling, procedures

Monitoring results

Figures 1 to 3 show the results graphically under each of the Compliance Areas areas in:

• RECC’s Consumer Satisfaction Questionnaire (Figure 1)
• audits of members (Figure 2) and
• complaints about members (Figure 3).

Figure 1: percentage of consumers responding positively to survey questions

Figure 2: % of audited members compliant on each Compliance Area at audit

Figure 3: % of disputes registered in which Compliance area featured

The Annual Report provides more detailed commentary on each of these planks of the monitoring programme (see pp  13-14, 11-12 and  18-25, respectively). Highlighted points include:

• overall the majority of consumers who provided feedback were positive about their experience with RECC members, with nearly six in ten (57%) rating their  overall experience as 4/5 or 5/5, indicating they were satisfied or very satisfied; a similar proportion (59%) rated the quality of work 4/5 or 5/5; and 62 per cent were satisfied or very satisfied with customer service.
• the most frequent area of non-compliance found at audits was in estimates/quotes, followed by contracts and cancellation rights;
• after-sales (guarantees, workmanship warranties and warranty protection, after-sales support and customer service) was the most frequently-featured Compliance Area in disputes.

As the Annual Report outlines, RECC has used these results to steer its work in producing model documents, running webinars and providing training, as well as in providing the focus of its compliance activities.

The following section brings together all the performance measures from the monitoring programme under each of the 10 Compliance Areas. 

Performance measures

Table 1 provides the 10 Key Compliance Areas with all associated performance measures against which RECC undertook to report. The areas are shaded to show their relative priority – the darker the shade, the higher the priority.

Table 1: Performance by Compliance Area