District Energy Editing and Proofreading Services

A heat network customer cannot switch supplier. There is one pipe, one operator, and a contract signed by a developer years before anybody moved in. Everything that protects that customer — the price they pay, what happens when the heat goes off, whether the standing charge can double — has to be in a document they did not negotiate and have very often never read.

We edit what heat network operators and district energy providers produce — customer connection agreements and heat supply terms, tariff statements and price change notices, service standards and interruption compensation terms, metering, billing and estimated reading policies, customer guides and welcome packs, heat purchase agreements with developers and building owners, technical connection requirements for new buildings, outage and planned works communications, complaints and vulnerable customer procedures, scheme performance and efficiency reporting, and consultation material for proposed networks. Our editors work on the documents a customer cannot walk away from.

The customer heat agreement is where a heat network is either a fair monopoly or an unfair one, and the writing test is whether somebody with no alternative supplier can see what they are exposed to. We work through these so the tariff is set out with its structure and, crucially, what can change it and how much notice is given, since a standing charge that can be revised annually by reference to an index the customer cannot look up is a price with no ceiling; so the service standard states the temperature and flow the customer is entitled to and what happens when it is not delivered, in money, automatically, because compensation a customer must apply for is compensation most of them will not receive; so planned and unplanned interruption terms are separated and given in hours rather than as reasonable endeavours; so responsibility for equipment inside the property is drawn precisely, given that the heat interface unit is where most disputes begin; so the comparison to what a gas boiler would cost is made honestly if it is made at all, as this is the claim customers remember and later quote; and so the complaints route and the external escalation are stated on the first page rather than the last. Agreements written this way survive the scrutiny that heat networks are now under.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including agreements, tariffs and scheme documentation. We are editors rather than energy, regulatory or legal advisers, and we offer no view on your tariffs, terms or obligations. What we can do is make a captive customer's position visible to them.