ASA ruling on greener heating and insulation products

The Advertising Standards Authority (“ASA”) upheld a complaint against a British Gas advertisement seen on Facebook for the claim “Go greener and lower your bills. Save up to £546 with a heat pump and our exclusive tariff”, “switch to a heat pump and start saving with British Gas” and “upgrade to a low-carbon hat pump and you could save up to £546”.

The ASA found that the claims were misleading because the ad did not disclose that the savings figure was modelled or explain the assumptions behind it. These assumptions included medium household energy usage, customers stopping gas use entirely (and therefore avoiding the gas standing charge), and the comparison being based on a boiler with a ‘D’ efficiency rating. The ASA concluded that British Gas had not shown these assumptions were representative of their customer base, nor that a significant proportion of consumers would realistically achieve the stated saving.

The regulator also ruled that the ad omitted material information. Because the savings depended on specific circumstances and modelling criteria, the ASA said these details needed to be included in the ad itself, not only on a landing page. As a result, the ad breached multiple CAP Code rules relating to misleading advertising, substantiation, qualification, and price claims. The ASA instructed British Gas not to run the ad again in its current form and to ensure future “up to” savings claims are supported by robust evidence and accompanied by all necessary qualifying information.