More than 230 residents in Stoke-on-Trent are to launch a class action lawsuit against the city council after they claim they were “mis-sold” 25-year solar power contracts which have left some with faulty panels and unexpected bills.
Council house tenants in the city said they feel “lied to” after being signed up to the contracts without realising, and facing years of what they believe is poor quality customer service and installation.
Community Energy Scheme (CES) was launched in 2018 by the city council in conjunction with Solarplicity Energy, which sent staff door to door to encourage residents to sign up to the solar panel scheme. It now has 4,800 customers in the city.
Tenants signed up to contracts on the spot with a signature on an iPad, but many residents said they thought they were only agreeing to have their home assessed for its suitability for solar panel installation.
Cassandra Burton, 50, has lived in her three-bedroom semi-detached council property for 15 years, and was alone at home when someone from CES came. “I thought it was for them to do a survey on the property, check the roof basically. I signed the iPad and that was it, I never heard anything else from them,” she said. “I had no idea I’d signed up to a 25-year contract until we read a story in the newspaper about them.”
She later found out her digital signature had been copied on to three separate documents. “I’m autistic, I was by myself, I didn’t have my partner with me, I just thought it was a council thing. I feel like they took advantage,” said Burton, adding that her solar panels were never hooked up to her electricity supply but she still received bills.
“It’s a constant stress. Every single day I’m on the CES community group on Facebook to check what’s happening, what the latest advice is. I won’t let anybody in my house now,” she said. “Who doesn’t want more renewable energy? Who doesn’t want to help the Earth be a better place? But it makes me really angry.”
Bibby Thomas, 58, said she specifically asked the salesperson to explain what she was signing when he came to her door in 2019. “He gave me this iPad, and I said: ‘I’m dyslexic, so I can’t read the whole lot. I’m not signing anything that shouldn’t be signing, am I?’ He said no, everything was fine, so I did a squiggle on it.”
She claims no one mentioned a 25-year contract.
A number of residents are to launch a class action lawsuit against the council and CES over how the scheme was sold to them.
In response to concern expressed by customers, CES said they were given the option to keep their existing contract, swap to an updated contract with more user-friendly language and terms, or exit the agreement and switch back to receiving all of their electricity from the grid.
The company insists the fact the agreements were for 25 years was stated on the CES website, literature, contracts and by sales teams, and that all tenants received a letter from the council explaining the scheme before being signed up. It also said the majority of tenants received a verification call to check they had been given the information.
The Conservative-run Stoke-on-Trent city council gave Solarplicity Energy exclusive rights to install the panels on its housing stock, initially handing over the details of more than 1,000 homes it thought would be suitable, in return for £100 for each installation.
Solar panels were also installed on empty council house properties, meaning prospective tenants had to sign up to the solar energy scheme as a condition of tenancy.
The Stoke-on-Trent Labour councillor Desiree Elliott said the scheme had been “a failure and a scandal from the beginning”. She said: “The company involved has demonstrated time and again that it is not up to delivering a project of this size with any semblance of professionalism.”
Residents said they were promised the solar panels would come with batteries, allowing them to store surplus solar energy to use in the evenings and on darker days, but these have only recently started being rolled out.
CES said 200 tenant properties have had batteries installed since 2020.
In 2019 Solarplicity Energy ceased trading after criticism from Ofgem and the Energy Ombudsman, who received 3,324 complaints about the company, and tenants have been switched to a different supplier, while still remaining part of the 25-year CES contracts.
A Stoke-on-Trent city council spokesperson said the scheme was designed to support tenants “in lowering their energy bills and reducing carbon emissions”.
“Supporting households to generate more sustainable, cheaper and greener energy is even more significant given the considerable rises in energy prices this winter. It is clearly not appropriate to comment any further on a matter that is subject to legal proceedings.”
A spokesperson for CES said: “We have worked hard to get sustainable and affordable energy to those who would otherwise completely miss out. We’ve listened to concerns raised about the accessibility of language used in our contracts, and we’ve offered tenants the opportunity to make their own choice about how the solar energy being generated on their home is used.
“We remain committed to making access to solar as easy and beneficial as possible, and tenants are welcome to contact us if we can provide them with any support.”
