BELit FAQs

If your business entered into a business energy contract for the supply of gas or electricity using a broker, or third-party energy consultant to source, or sign it up to, the contract, then we believe your business has a potential claim in the BELit Group Litigation.

Yes, it may still have a claim – as long as it did previously enter into an energy supply contract via a broker or third-party energy consultant – as above.

No. The action is focused on business energy supply contracts, in relation to which our legal team has identified specific causes of legal action.

Yes – it’s open to any organisation, as long as it has, or had, a business energy supply contract, as above.

In order to register, you simply provide some basic contact information and a limited amount of information about the business’ most recent energy supply contract(s).

Further into the process, more detailed information will be required including information taken from, and scans or photos of, the following documents for each energy supply contract that you want our legal team to analyse (at no cost) to evaluate the potential:

• The energy supply contract;
• The most recent invoice for gas or electricity;
• The energy broker’s Letter of Authority that allowed it to act on behalf of the business;
• The energy broker’s Terms and Conditions (if ever provided to the business).

All information provided will be stored securely and treated as confidential. Please see our Privacy Policy.

Any employee can be responsible for the processing of the business’ claim, as long as they are able to access information about the relevant business energy supply contract(s). As the “registrant”, we will liaise with them so that the correct information is provided to RGL and our legal team. The registrant will also receive our newsletters.

However, the Litigation Management Agreement (LMA), which is the legal agreement that must be signed by the business so that it can be part of the BELit Group Action, will need to be signed by an authorised signatory of the business. Please note that the registration form allows the registrant to provide the contact details of the authorised signatory (if different); these must be provided so that we can draw up the LMA documents correctly.

Each business (assuming it is a limited company) is an independent legal entity and therefore has its own potential claim. Please therefore complete a separate registration for each business, using (if possible) a different contact email address in each case.

Yes, as long as it still exists as a legal entity, i.e. has not been dissolved. If it has been dissolved, it could well still have a claim if it was restored to the Register of Companies.

No, not from RGL’s perspective.

No, there is no cost (and no obligation) as a result of registering. You simply provide some basic contact details and we will be in touch shortly afterwards about the next steps. There is no cost or payment required at any point in our process, unless and until your case is successful.

That is how it is commonly known. RGL will arrange for a third-party litigation funder to cover, on a non-recourse basis, all legal and other costs of the BELit claimants in pursuing their legal claims in relation to their energy supply contracts. In other words, if the claims lose, your business will pay nothing. Only on success will fees be payable.

RGL will also arrange for insurance to be in place, so that BELit claimants will not have to pay any “adverse costs” if their claims are not successful. i.e. If the claims lose, your business will pay nothing.

A third-party litigation funder that specialises in financing the pursuit of large commercial claims in Court will pay all the legal and other costs of the action until judgment (or earlier settlement).

If your business’ claim fails, the funder, the insurers and RGL will receive nothing. If the claims are successful – as we all expect – a proportion will be deducted from the recoveries. This will be used to reimburse the monies spent on the claims by the funder, pay a profit element to the funder for risking its funds on the claims, pay the insurance premium due to the insurers for insuring the claims against losing, pay the lawyers’ any deferred and success fees due, and pay RGL’s administration costs. Your business will nonetheless receive the majority share of any recovery.

There will be a worked example in the Appendix to your LMA.

A percentage (%) will be deducted from any successful claim amount.

The % to be deducted on success will vary according to the value of the successful claim.

There will be a scale of three levels of deduction: 20%; 22.5%; and 25%, to be applied as follows:

• 25% (plus any applicable VAT) will be deducted from any recovered claim amount up to and including £250,000; plus
• 22.5% (plus any applicable VAT) will be deducted from any part of the recovered claim amount above £250,000 but less than £1,000,000; plus
• 20% (plus any applicable VAT) will be deducted from any part of the recovered claim amount above £1,000,000.

In the interests of fairness, this scale reflects the unavoidable fact that there are elements of the legal costs and aspects of the claim preparation work that are not significantly different, regardless of the claim size.

To the extent that the legal fees and expenses of the claims are also recovered from the defendant(s), any such amount(s) will be paid to the funder.

The % deducted from the successful claim amount will be used to:

1. reimburse the monies spent by the funder on the legal fees and expenses claims that are not recovered from the defendant(s);
2. pay a profit element to the litigation funder (which is by far the largest proportion of the deducted amount) for risking its funds on the claims;
3. pay the insurance premium due to the insurers for insuring the claims against losing;
4. pay the lawyers any deferred and success fees due; and
5. any remaining balance to pay a profit element to the owners of RGL.

As above, however, your business will nonetheless receive the lion’s share of any recovery.

A financial illustration will be provided with your Litigation Management Agreement before the business decides whether it wishes to join the BELit Group Litigation.

Rest assured, the business is not required to make any commitment before this information is explained in detail and before the business’ authorised signatory expressly agrees to it.

Our research shows:

Harcus Parker LLP – ‘33% of the damages received by you plus VAT (if applicable) plus your proportionate share of disbursements such as After the Event Insurance premiums.’ (Source – website)

Leigh Day – ‘a maximum of 36.5% (including VAT and expenses) of the compensation.’ (Source – website)

Business Energy Claims (BEC) – “35% (ex VAT) of the claim value is deducted after a successful claim”. (Source – verbal quotation)

No.

No.

No. This is not possible. The funding agreement with the funder and the insurance policy with the insurers will make it explicitly clear that the amounts payable to the funder and to the insurers will be payable only if, and only to the extent that, there are funds available to pay. If the litigation is successful, but the total recovery is not sufficient to pay the funder and/or the insurer, their respective entitlement to fees, uplifts and premium will be expressly limited to the litigation recoveries that are available.

As the litigation progresses, the Judge will ask all parties to provide details on a reasonably regular basis about the costs each of them has incurred already and will incur in the future. ATE (or “After the Event”) insurance is aimed at protecting against having to pay the other side’s costs if the claims are not successful, so we and the legal team will closely monitor the updates provided by the defendant(s) about their incurred and projected legal costs. If and when it became apparent that the amount of ATE insurance purchased (the “limit of indemnity” or “LOI”) was likely to be insufficient at some point in the future, the LOI would be increased. If for whatever reason the ATE insurers refused to increase the LOI – a very unlikely scenario – the litigation would be swiftly brought to a conclusion such that the incurred costs of the defendants did not exceed the existing LOI, i.e. the claimants would not be exposed to having to pay the costs of the defendant(s).

Please note that the funder, as well being focused on the claims having strong merits, will also ensure there is more than sufficient ATE insurance available before the litigation is commenced and as it progresses. This is because the funder would also be exposed to having to pay the other side’s costs if the claims are unsuccessful. So just like the claimants, it is a fundamental requirement of the funder that sufficient ATE insurance is in place at all times.

ATE (or “After the Event”) insurance covers against the risk of a legal claim being unsuccessful and the claimant having to pay the defendant’s costs. ATE insurance has been available to cover commercial litigation claims for 15 years or more. In that time, many thousands of claims have been underwritten by ATE insurers. We are aware of only a handful of examples where ATE insurers have refused to meet the adverse costs liability of the insured litigant in question. The % of ATE claims refused is therefore negligible.

To ensure, however, that even this negligible risk of non-payment is removed, RGL will also arrange for the purchase of additional protection or “security” that, absent fraud, guarantees the payment of the costs of the defendant(s) by the ATE insurers.

With one exception, therefore, there will be no risk of the ATE insurers not paying the “adverse” costs if the claims are not successful. The one exception relates to fraud: if a claimant dishonestly brings a claim or gives dishonest evidence, then they would not be protected by the ATE insurance. This would not impact the other claimants insured under the policy – they would still be covered (provided, of course, they had also not brought dishonest claims or provided dishonest evidence).

To state the obvious, therefore, the business must not be dishonest in bringing a claim in relation to its energy supply contract(s).

Each business’ liability to pay tax is unique. If this is an important issue for the business at this stage, the business should seek its own tax advice – RGL is not permitted (regulated) to give such advice.

Once you have registered the business with BELit, you will receive further details about the terms and conditions of the BELit Group Litigation. Please note, however, that registering does not mean the business is committed to having to participate in the litigation; the decision to commit or not can be taken once you have received further information and had a chance to consider it and ask any questions (beyond the available FAQs) about it, and before signing the Litigation Management Agreement (LMA).

The LMA or “Litigation Management Agreement” is the agreement between your business and RGL, by which RGL is authorised to investigate the merits of the business’ legal claim in relation to its energy supply contract(s) and, if merited, to manage the pursuit of the claim (together with all of the other claims in the BELit Group Action) with the appointed legal team on behalf of the business. The LMA also authorises RGL to include your business and its claim (if merited) in the funding and insurance arrangements, such that the business does not have to pay any of the fees and costs of the legal action (unless and until the claim succeeds) and is protected against the risk of losing the legal action.

The claims will focus on the unlawful payment to energy brokers of undisclosed commissions.

The goal is to recover undisclosed commission and, potentially, other related amounts for businesses that signed up to contracts for gas and electricity through brokers, and incurred the cost of such commission being paid to brokers.

Each individual claim will be different. The amount of each claim will vary depending on energy usage. Claims are likely to be worth tens to hundreds of thousands of pounds. The value of any potential claim your business may have will be analysed and evaluated in due course by RGL’s legal team at zero cost and zero risk to you.

Timescales will remain uncertain until the legal proceedings are formally commenced in Court. Our regular newsletter will keep registrants updated.

The exact process of how a significant number of claims based on similar issues of law and fact relating to energy supply contracts will be dealt with by the Court, will not be known until a Judge considers the relevant “case management” issues. This will become clearer as the proceedings advance in Court, but it is likely the Judge will decide that a relatively small selection of claims should be considered first as “test” cases, rather than hearing all of the claims all at the same time.

Pursuing any commercial legal claim is a very difficult, time consuming and expensive endeavour. Bringing a claim as one of a large group of claimants is far more effective and efficient.

RGL Management is a litigation claim specialist, with extensive expertise in law, investment banking, corporate operational management and claimant communication, all of which are essential when managing a large complex group legal action.

Before legal proceedings are commenced, the BELit Group will be armed with funding and insurance, and represented by a top legal team, so as to match the lawyers and resources of any identified defendant(s). This will provide the fire power necessary to create the level playing field that is essential to pursue commercial litigation.

Furthermore, the RGL team takes care of the majority of the administrative and processing burden and also liaison with the legal team. This preserves your management time, allowing you and your team to continue to focus on your day-to-day business requirements and responsibilities.

Only those documents that are actually in the business’ possession or to which the business has access and that relate to its claim will need to be provided. If documents have been lost along the way, then it may not be a problem (although it will not necessarily help the prospects of the business’ claim).

Initially, for each of the business’ energy supply contracts that you wish to be considered in relation to potentially making a claim, you should try to obtain:

• The energy supply contract;
• The most recent invoice for gas or electricity;
• The energy broker’s Letter of Authority to act on behalf of the business;
• The energy broker’s Terms and Conditions (if ever provided).

All information provided to RGL will be stored securely and treated as confidential. Please see our Privacy Policy.

From now on, it is very important that you do not delete, throw away or destroy any documents, emails, or correspondence that relate to any business energy supply contracts entered into for the supply of gas or electricity using a broker, or third-party energy consultant, to source or sign up to the contract.

If the business becomes a claimant in the BELit Group Action, its name would appear on the relevant letters of claim and other litigation related documents that are served on any defendant. As such, the defendant would be aware of the participation of the business in the legal action. However, we are some way off this point at the moment – there would certainly not be any disclosure of the business’ name if you register with us.

Even if the business is ultimately part of the BELit Group Action, we would expect it would be one of a very large number of claimant names.

If there is such an appeal of the “first instance” judgment, i.e. the Judge decides that the defendant should pay the business’ losses, but the defendant is permitted to appeal to the Court of Appeal, then our legal team would obviously have to prepare and argue that the first instance judgment should stand and that the appeal should not succeed. The litigation funder would fund the costs of the appeal and the insurers would insure claimants against losing the appeal, such that claimants would not have to pay anything. The funder and insurers would do this because it would be very much in their financial interest to protect/confirm the “win” achieved before the Judge at first instance.

It is too early to say. If settlement was to become an option, the claims may not even go to trial (which is the hearing in Court that witnesses would have to attend and give evidence). If the claims were not settled and did go to trial, the chances of someone from the business being called as a witness are very slim. This is because there will be thousands of claimants in the BELit Group Action and the Judge will very likely select a relatively small number of claims to go to trial as “test” claims.

We cannot say at this stage which claims would be the “test” claims. The selection process would be some way into the formal Court process

In the (statistically) unlikely event (given the thousands of claims) the business’ claim was selected as one of the relatively small number of “test” claims, then it is likely that certain employees of the business would be called as witnesses (e.g. those that had some dealing with the energy supply broker(s) in question) and have to attend the trial (if no earlier settlement).

No. RGL Management will retain law firms, Fladgate LLP and TYR Law (or another firm of comparable solicitors if it became necessary), to act in this matter. However, if there is already a lawyer who has knowledge or documentation relating to the business’ potential claim, it would be useful for us to make contact with them.

It is envisaged that a large proportion of the BELit Group Action’s claims will be handled by Fladgate LLP. However, in case of any potential conflicts, TYR Law will step in to run claims.

RGL Management publish regular email updates, which are sent to every registrant who is part of the BELit Group Action.

All information and data provided by you in relation to the business’ energy supply related claim will be kept confidential by RGL, albeit it will be shared, in confidence, with our professional advisors. Please click on the link to read our Privacy Policy.

RGL Management Limited is registered with the Information Commissioners Office. Registration number ZA175833. Registration address: 29 Lincolns Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3EE.

Yes you can. After you’ve registered and provided further information, we and our legal team will consider the business’ claim and confirm whether it could be included in the BELit Group Action, bearing in mind always that registering your interest with BELit does not involve any cost to the business, or any further commitment. However, if your claim proceeds as part of the BELit Group Action, you would need to ensure that any registration with, or participation in, any other energy supply contract action was brought to an end/discontinued in respect of those contracts included in the BELit Group Action