Exemptions relating to the sale of energy to residential customers have conditions concerning customers who are experiencing financial difficulty due to hardship. In July 2022 the AER released its revised Retail Exempt Selling Guideline (v6), to include a hardship policy condition. Retail exemption holders that sell energy to residential customers must now provide a hardship policy to residential customers that identify themselves as experiencing financial difficulty due to hardship.
The AER intends to extend this condition, alongside the requirement for an exempt seller to offer flexible payment options (including payment plans), to all existing relevant individual exemptions that were approved before July 2022.
Specifically, exemptions granted to individual exemption holders who sell electricity to residential customers will now require the seller:
- to develop, implement, maintain, and comply with a plain English hardship policy for their exempt customers,
- to supply this policy to exempt customers who self-identify as experiencing hardship, and
- to provide flexible payment options (including payment plans) to exempt customers who self-identify as experiencing hardship.
The AER may amend the conditions of any exemptions that it has approved. Under the National Energy Retail Rules (Retail Rules) changing a condition is taken to be changing the exemption itself and is subject to the retail consultation process specified in the Retail Rules.