How we check our guides

Every regulatory claim on this site is sourced, dated and labelled. This page says where the facts come from, what the labels mean, and how to tell us when we've got something wrong.

Independent, not official

HeatReturn is independent — who runs it and why. It is not affiliated with Ofgem or the UK government, and nothing here is legal advice. Ofgem's own published guidance is the authority; our guides summarise it so a landlord, managing agent or residents' management company can act on it.

Sources we use

• Ofgem: the regular data reporting guidance (10 March 2026), its guidance page, How to prepare for registration, How to prepare for data reporting, and Ofgem's blog posts on the digital service. Table and paragraph numbers in our guides refer to the March 2026 guidance PDF.
• GOV.UK: the Heat Network Technical Assurance Scheme pages.
• Heat Trust for scheme and consumer numbers and its notes on coming regulation.
• Legal commentary (named on the page) for how heat network rules interact with landlord and tenant law, always labelled as commentary rather than Ofgem's text.
• Compliance providers and trade bodies only where we say so, and only with the label "unverified".

The full list, with links, is on the disclaimer and sources page.

What the labels mean

• Verified — we have read the claim in the linked Ofgem or GOV.UK source, and the page says where (table, page or paragraph).
• Unverified — reported by a third party, such as a compliance provider, and not yet confirmed by us against the Regulations or Ofgem's text. Treat it as a pointer, not a fact.
• Expected — Ofgem's own stated timing that is not yet a fixed date.

We never present an unverified claim as fact, and we don't remove a label just because a claim is widely repeated.

How these pages are written

Every guide on this site is drafted with AI assistance (Anthropic's Claude) and published under the name of the person responsible for it, Fezan Ahmed. The AI helps with the first draft, with reading long Ofgem and GOV.UK documents, and with keeping page structure consistent. It does not decide what is true: before a page goes live, every regulatory claim in it is read against the linked source by the author, labelled verified or unverified by hand, and the table, page or paragraph it comes from is written next to it. Numbers that cannot be traced to a primary source are left out. Pages are written because a managing agent, RMC director or freeholder has a question we can answer from Ofgem's documents better than the documents answer it themselves — one question, one page — not to cover every phrasing of a search. Mistakes are the author's, and the change log at the foot of each guide records how they were corrected.

How often guides are re-checked

Every guide is re-checked against its sources before each Ofgem submission window opens (July, October, January, April) and whenever Ofgem publishes new heat network guidance. A script compares the source pages we rely on with the versions we last checked, so a change on Ofgem's or GOV.UK's side triggers a review.

Each guide shows two dates: "Last checked", the day we last read it against its sources, and "Last updated", the day its text last changed. A change log at the foot of every guide records what changed and when, including changes that add or correct a fact.

What we don't do

• We don't decide whether the regulations apply to your building, or whether you're compliant.
• We don't submit anything to Ofgem. Only Ofgem's digital service does that.
• We don't use Ofgem's or the government's branding, and we don't imply any official connection.

Report an error

If a guide says something Ofgem's guidance doesn't, or a source has moved or changed, email [email protected] with the page address and the source you're looking at. Corrections are recorded in that page's change log.