Consumer codes and dispute routes compared

Which route for which problem

The last two rows are where the Energy Ombudsman genuinely does apply — because network operators and suppliers are within its scope. The installation is not.

The consumer codes

Both are approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute under the Consumer Codes Approval Scheme, and both provide alternative dispute resolution.

RECC — the Renewable Energy Consumer Code, operated by Renewable Energy Assurance Limited, a subsidiary of the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology. It is also a TrustMark scheme operator.

HIES — a division of The Integrity Foundation, offering deposit and stage payment protection, an insurance-backed guarantee, and alternative dispute resolution.

TrustMark operates as a framework through scheme operators rather than as a direct alternative, which is why a business can hold TrustMark registration and code membership — they are not competing badges.

Neither code is the better one. What matters is knowing which your installer belongs to, because that determines where you go. Establish it before signing — checking an installer sets out how.

The sequence that works

1. Complain to the installer, in writing. Set out what is wrong, what you want, and a reasonable deadline. Email is fine and creates a record. Every subsequent route will ask whether you did this.

2. Escalate within the company if there is a complaints procedure. Ask for it.

3. Get an independent report if the dispute is technical. An inspection by another installer or an independent surveyor turns “I think it underperforms” into evidence. It is the step most often skipped and the one that most changes outcomes.

4. Go to the code’s ADR service. Give them the correspondence, the contract, the report, and a clear statement of the remedy you want.

5. Run a section 75 claim in parallel if credit was involved. It is independent, and the lender’s liability does not depend on the installer engaging with anything.

6. Court as a last resort. The small claims track handles modest sums without needing a solicitor.

Evidence that actually helps

The contract and everything you were shown before signing. Performance claims in sales material are the foundation of a misrepresentation case, and they are the documents people throw away.

Generation data. If the complaint is underperformance, monthly output figures over a full year are far stronger than an impression. Compare against a modelled figure for your location, pitch and orientation — our generation dataset is free and published precisely so that this comparison is possible.

Photographs, dated.

The paperwork that should exist. Missing MCS certificate, missing building regulations certificate, missing DNO notification — each is a concrete failure that is easy to evidence and hard to argue with.

All correspondence, including the messages the installer did not answer.

A note on underperformance claims

The commonest complaint and the hardest to prove, so it is worth being honest about.

A single disappointing year is not evidence. PVGIS puts year-to-year variation at roughly 2.4% to 4.1% at one standard deviation across our reference locations — so weather moves a year by a few per cent, not by a third. Our irradiance page sets that out.

What that means practically: a 5% shortfall is weather. A 25% shortfall is not. A large gap points at shading that was not assessed, a system that was never capable of the quoted figure, or a fault. All three are actionable; the first two are usually misrepresentation, and the modelled comparison is how you demonstrate them.

If your quote’s implied yield was above about 1,050 kWh per kWp, it was above anything our dataset achieves anywhere in the UK at 35° south — which is a specific, checkable point to put in a complaint. See kWp vs kWh.