Automatically Renewable Contracts – End of the Line

Ofcom today announced a decision to amend General Condition 9 in order to prohibit Automatically Renewable Contracts (ARCs also referred to as rollover contracts or rollovers) to residential customers and small businesses with no more than ten employees in the fixed voice and broadband sectors.

For fixed voice and fixed broadband residential and small business ARCs the prohibition on the sale of new ARCs will take effect on 31 December 2011. This means that the sale of new ARCs will be prohibited from that date.

Now all we need is a similar decision from Ofgem for Utility supplies!

Further details of the Ofcom decision can be found here including provisions for existing contracts:

Public sector restrictions on consultants

One of our consultants had a meeting earlier this week with a charity client that receives funding from Central Government, via the Ministry of Defence. They tell us, however, that the MOD have recently been directed by the Government that they, and those under their direct influence, are no longer allowed to enter into any new consultancy agreements, an edict we assume now applies to all Government and public sector bodies.  This led to concern that, while the existing project would be allowed to run, they would not be able to expand the remit of the project to include  new areas of cost, something they were keen to do. However, when looking at the directive in more detail, it seems the ban applies to advisory services and not to “implementation“  for which the organisation does not have adequate in-house knowledge or resources.

For this reason, our client believes the Auditel service falls outside the ban as it goes far beyond the simple provision of advice and is clearly based on providing full implementation and ongoing management. What’s more, as a results-driven service, fees are not paid unless and until savings and benefits can be proven and, as an outsourced service, it is also specifically designed to fill the skills and knowledge gap many UK organisations experience in the area of cost and purchase management.

The real cost of packaging waste

One of our consultants, Terry Crouch, has been doing some waste management work for a client recently and as a result came across an article about another local company that fell foul of the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007 following a routine Environment Agency visit. These oblige any company with an annual turnover in excess of £2 million and handling more than 50 tonnes of wood, aluminium, steel, cardboard or plastic packaging waste a year to register with the Enviroment Agency or an approved compliance scheme. Each year, they must also provide evidence of payment for recovery and recycling of a specified proportion of their packaging.  And the real cost of these obligations? Well, this company was fined a total of £23,000 for not meeting them! Of course, Terry’s client won’t have this problem as he’ll ensure all the paperwork and bureacracy is in order as an integral part of his management service.