Citizens Advice response to Smart Energy Code Modification Report Consultation on MP234 Addition of Public Task and Legitimate Interests into the SEC
We believe that the proposed solution will be negative for consumers in relation to their control over their data. The Data Access and Privacy Framework, written by Government and reflected in supply licence conditions, is clear that consumers can choose which personal data they share with their suppliers. Customers have repeatedly and clearly said that trust is key for both smart meters and smart enabled products and services. 92% of those surveyed said it's important that customers are able to make choices about who accesses their data.
Reliance on GDPR principles of Legitimate Interest or Public Task considerations would be counter to the principle of consumers having control over their data. In most relationships between a consumer and a commercial provider, the consumer gives up their data in direct exchange for a service or product. In this scenario, the consumer will have their data taken without their knowledge or permission and used for a commercial purpose without any direct, or potentially any indirect, benefit.
We are concerned that smart meter data users will bypass the existing protections and rely on the GDPR parameters. This is not in consumers’ interests. It is also almost inevitable that once such an avenue is opened up many organisations which currently rely on consumer consent and a value-exchange offer in exchange for a consumers’ data will switch to using a legitimate interest basis, further reducing the control and choice consumers have over their data.
We believe that consumer trust in smart meter data will be impacted negatively if they discover that commercial third parties are accessing their data without explicit permission and passing it (for commercial gain) to Local Authorities, Social Landlords, other public bodies, and, in fact, any commercial entity. Individual as well as private business customer smart meter data could be affected by this modification and any loss of trust in the smart meter environment may result in impacts to the wider smart meter rollout for both the domestic and non-domestic sectors. Such negative impacts could result in a slow down in the smart meter rollout and consequent slowdown in usage of flexibility and in achieving net zero.
We have not been provided with sufficient evidence to show that providing smart meter usage data to these public bodies and commercial entities will have the benefits for consumers that is described especially as the existing uZero project (The UrbanTide and Data Communications Company (DCC) (https://urbantide.com/uzero) offers many of the same benefits to Local Authorities without any disclosure of individual personal data. We therefore do not believe that there is a need for this modification proposal.
In addition, we believe that it is premature to introduce this modification when the Retail Energy Code has been tasked by Ofgem to design a Consumer Consent Solution (CCS) for energy data. The CCS will be developed with wide industry input via multiple workshops and consultations. It would be better to await the results of the CCS which will be transparent within industry and have higher visibility to the public via utility press updates.