Ofgem's consultation on a consumer consent solution - Which? response

We believe that data sharing initiatives around consumer data should be driven by consumer interests, fostering effective trust and confidence from consumers in sharing their data, and broadly support Ofgem’s proposed design principles for the development of a consumer consent solution which will be developed by Ofgem’s selected Delivery Body. 

Delivering a successful consumer consent solution with effective protections will be crucial in a future energy retail market that is set to become more complex. As electrification of people’s homes and transport increases alongside a rise in time-of-use tariffs and other forms of demand-side response, it will be increasingly important that consumers are able to share their data with trusted third parties to make sense of this complexity and make good choices. We are pleased that Ofgem is making progress with designing a system which can enable this, while building in design principles that ensure protection and that consent is informed. 

We see the consumer consent solution as having strong links to the development of cross-sector Smart Data schemes and it is essential that the design principles support this. Which? has developed a consumer-focused model for data-sharing trust frameworks in Smart Data schemes, with consumer control and consent at the centre. We plan to publish this policy paper in autumn/winter 2024 and we look forward to sharing it with Ofgem then. 

We understand that Ofgem’s consultation on a consumer consent solution and the government’s workstream on smart data are independent of each other. However, in practice, we see that the proposals in this consultation have strong overlaps with the Government smart data work. This consumer consent solution will help enable data sharing initiatives between third parties and the energy sector, as would a smart data scheme. It is not clear to us to what extent Ofgem and the government are working together on these two workstreams, and we would encourage these to be joined up.