NCC thinks retailers should make it easier for consumers to shop for environmentally friendly products. To do this, they should bring in ‘choice editing’: improving the environmental standards of all products and taking the most damaging ones off the shelves.

While we applaud retailers that take action on sustainability, we believe that choice editing is preferable to green labelling schemes such as Tesco’s carbon labelling. It’s far better to ensure that the range of products on offer is as green as possible in the first place, rather than to confuse consumers with a complicated labelling system.

To read more about this, click here for our report ‘I will if you will’. Choice editing is discussed on page 16.

Click here to read ‘Information blackout’, our report on the lack of green information on electronic goods.

Click here for ‘Green grocers’, our assessment of the green credentials of the major UK supermarkets.

Ofgem fuel poverty summit

Sharply rising gas and electricity prices mean that the Government’s target to eradicate fuel poverty for vulnerable households by 2010 will not be met.

While the energy industry fails to take sufficient steps to increase social tariffs, the government has cut investment in its flagship fuel poverty programme, Warm Front, by 25 per cent.

Bringing together leading organisations in the fight against fuel poverty, industry regulator Ofgem’s fuel poverty summit, which took place on 23rd April, addressed the urgent question of what must now be done to help vulnerable people who are unable to heat their homes.

NCC is calling for effective social tariffs, energy efficiency measures and financial support for poor and vulnerable consumers.

Click here to read NCC's blueprint for action on fuel poverty, 'Energy shouldn't cost the Earth'

Click here for more information about the Warm Front campaign

Spotlight on:

Lessons from ombudsmania

Ombudsmen rank as one of Britain's most successful imports and are expanding at pace into new markets. However, while individual schemes appear to operate well, there has been less scrutiny of how the system as a whole is working. NCC's fresh thinking pamphlet fills that gap, by taking a strategic assessment of private sector ombudsmen and examining some live issues that the schemes face. We conclude that the current ombudsman landscape, which reflects the emergence of schemes in a piecemeal fashion over the last twenty-five years, is increasingly out-of-step with the needs of the modern economy. We call for a single organisation - the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council - to take strategic responsibility for the future development of ombudsmen of all types.

Click here for the pamphlet

Spotlight on:

House rules: Second Reading of the Housing and Regeneration Bill

Affordable housing is an essential service for vulnerable consumers, but the way social housing operates limits the quality of what they receive. And the way the market is regulated needs to be more user-focused. NCC welcomes the Office of Tenants and Social Landlords, which we called for in our submission to the Cave Review on the regulation of social housing. However, the Bill lacks measures to give the new regulator a duty to directly engage with social tenants and where relevant, the public at large. We do not expect regulators to become consumer advocates but they should consider and involve service users in reaching decisions that affect them, and regulate in a way that delivers the best outcomes. An effective voice is also a necessary perquisite to increasing choices for tenants.

Click here to see the Second Reading briefing.

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About NCC

The National Consumer Council (NCC) makes a practical difference to the lives of consumers around the UK, using its insight into consumer needs to advocate change.

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