Aberdeen City Council

Background

As part of wider support for their community, Aberdeen City Council provides centralised energy invoicing across numerous sites, including schools, public spaces and domestic properties.

With an energy expenditure exceeding £14 million a year, billing accuracy and efficiency is crucial to optimising public spend. The Council contracted PCMG to analyse their energy invoices for historical overcharges and potential savings.

The challenge

Following an initial consultation to discuss audit requirements, PCMG obtained the Council’s extensive inventory of account numbers along with a Letter of Authority.

With this information, PCMG approached energy suppliers and secured access to electricity and gas invoices dating back five years for the properties in scope.

In most cases, the Council’s energy accounts were consolidated based on site type or meter, with invoices issued on a mix of monthly and quarterly charges.

The PCMG team began scrutinising and validating each invoice line by line for every meter across this extensive portfolio, including:

• Distribution charges
• Transmission charges
• Capacities
• All applicable levies

The solution

In an initial review with the Council, PCMG outlined their findings and pinpointed areas where further information was required to progress.

With the additional information, PCMG engaged with suppliers and HMRC to challenge the charges raised and began the process of securing refunds for the Council.

Upon completing the audit, PCMG held a progress meeting with Council representatives to discuss ongoing refunds and newly identified opportunities. At this stage, the Council was provided with:

• A final audit report

• A tracker documenting all findings, values and actions

This tracker served as a critical tool for monitoring progress.

Each month, PCMG reviewed refund progress and provided a detailed breakdown of achieved savings during update calls with the Council team. All information was documented in the monthly tracker. These calls continued until all refunds were secured and monthly savings fully realised.

At completion, the Council reviewed the success of the audit and discussed key learnings to support future improvements.

The results

While the Council may have been able to identify some refunds independently, the sheer scale of the estate and the volume of data made pinpointing refunds and savings extremely challenging.

PCMG’s expertise in detailed analysis proved invaluable, enabling the Council to secure substantial refunds and savings and reinvest this value back into the community.