BLAIR Nimmo and Alistair McAlinden of KPMG have been appointed as joint administrators of Spark Energy Supply, with the role of collecting money owed by this company’s electricity and gas customers.
Regulator Ofgem moved last week to protect customers of Spark Energy, following the failure of the Selkirk group’s energy supply subsidiary. Spark Energy Supply ceased to be a supplier on Friday.
Ofgem said on Tuesday it had appointed Ovo Energy to take on about 290,000 domestic electricity and gas customers served by the Borders business. The regulator confirmed that, separately, Ovo had acquired operating company Spark Energy. Ofgem noted Ovo had retained the Spark Energy brand. Ovo pledged to retain Spark Energy’s operations and teams in Selkirk, Edinburgh and Horsham. Spark Energy employs more than 400 people in Selkirk.
KPMG emphasised yesterday that Spark Energy Supply had no employees.
It added: “No other companies which are part of the Spark Energy group are affected by the administration of Spark Energy Supply Ltd.”
Mr Nimmo said yesterday: “Recent major changes in the energy sector have been well-documented and, unfortunately, Spark Energy found itself unable to avoid the challenges it, and other similar suppliers, have faced.
“Against this backdrop, it is to their credit that the Spark team has been able to navigate a route through these challenges, securing a continuation of service for its customers and protecting its employees.”
Mr Gauld said on Tuesday: “We will service our customers, under Ovo’s licence, from our existing offices, and continue to grow our niche model of partnering with leading letting and estate agent companies.”
The Herald revealed this month that the Borders energy supplier had missed a £14.4 million renewables obligation payment, with Mr Gauld claiming the UK Government’s price cap had caused “chaos” in the sector.
Mr Nimmo said: “Our role now, as administrators to Spark Energy Supply Ltd, is to work with those customers who owed money to the company to collect the outstanding balances. We will be working with Spark Energy and Ovo Energy to contact those customers shortly.”
KPMG noted customers with credit balances with Spark when Ovo took over would have these honoured by the new supplier.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here