Micro business FAQs

Suppliers must take all reasonable steps to identify micro business customers at the point of entering or extending a non-domestic supply contract.

Your company will be considered a micro business if it meets one of the following criteria:

• You consume less than 293,000 kWh of gas / 100,000 kWh of electricity per year; or
• You have fewer than 10 employees and your annual turnover or annual balance sheet is no greater than €2 million

Under the policy set by Ofgem, every supplier must adhere to the following rules when contracting with a micro business:

• We must provide key information, drafted in clear and intelligible language, both pre and post contract, in the form of your principal terms
• Any fixed term must automatically cease on your contract end date, without any requirement for termination notice
• We must contact you at least 60 days prior to your ‘end date’ with details of your renewal terms
• We must observe specific rules if back billing any micro business customer

Yes. Back bills that are issued are limited to a period of no more than 12 months. We do have the ability to bill beyond this, but only if we believe that your actions have prevented us from sending you an invoice (whether they be obstructive or constitute unreasonable behaviour). You should note that we are still allowed to chase you for non-payment of invoices irrespective of the date of issue.

We will contact you in writing at least 60 days prior to your ‘end date’ with details of your renewal offer. If you do not agree to our renewal offer, your contract will automatically terminate on your ‘end date’ and you will be charged at our Out of Contract Rates from your contract ‘end date’ until the date that you switch supplier or agree a new contract with us.

If you do not renew with us and you fail to switch supplier, you will be charged Out of Contract rates from your ‘end date’. Our Out of Contract Rates will be higher than the contracted rates for your supply. In this situation, you have the right to change supplier at any time subject to you paying our charges in full first.

For a copy of our prevailing Out of Contract rates, please see here.

If you choose to switch supplier at the end of your Agreement, you must appoint a new supplier to take over from the ‘end date’. In order to switch supplier, you must have paid all outstanding sums due to us under the terms of your Agreement. If you have not done this, we have the right to prevent your transfer as per our General Terms & Conditions.

Yes. We may pay your broker a commission on one or both of the following bases:

(a) an uplift in pence per kWh incorporated into the Unit Charge you pay; and

(b) a fixed-price uplift incorporated into the Standing Charge you pay

Examples:

• Say we offered a unit rate of 9.0p per kWh to which the broker applied an uplift of 0.5p per kWh, the contracted unit rate you would pay would be 9.5p per kWh. If your estimated annual gas consumption was 15,000 kWh and your supply contract was for a period of two years, the total estimated commission your broker will receive would be £150 (0.5p x 15,000 / 100 x), although the final amount may be dependent on your actual consumption.
• Alternatively, say we offered a Standing Charge of £1.20 per day and the broker uplifts this by £0.20 per day, the contracted daily Standing Charge you would pay would be £1.40 per day. If your supply contract was for a period of two years, the total commission your broker will receive would be £146 (0.20 x 730). This would be a fixed rate independent of your consumption.

The level of uplift included within your supply contract is not determined by us and should be agreed between you and your broker when you procure their services.

For more information you can email us at hello@crowngas.co.uk.

For general information on how we work with our brokers, please see our Quotations & Contracts FAQs.