ACS has welcomed a letter from energy minister Dr Miatta Fahnbulleh MP, announcing that the requirement for retailers to report on their fuel availability as part of the upcoming Fuel Finder scheme will be postponed.
The Government aims to launch the Fuel Finder scheme by the end of 2025. When the scheme is launched, retailers will be required to report on the retail prices of all types of petrol and diesel, as well as reporting on changes in those prices within 30 minutes. Under previous proposals, the scheme would also require retailers to report on when there is no availability of a fuel grade on their site.
ACS, along with Fuels Industry UK and the Petrol Retailers Association, wrote to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero earlier this year outlining its concerns with the practicality of those reporting requirements and questioning whether they would provide any tangible benefits for consumers.
ACS/ Yonder consumer polling completed in May 2025 found:
- · Consumers have high confidence in fuel availability, rating fuel availability at 8.5 out of 10
- · Nearly three quarters of drivers have never had to drive to an alternative fuel site in the last 12 months to fill up
- · Two-thirds say they are unlikely to check fuel availability on a mobile app
ACS chief executive James Lowman says: “We are pleased that the Government is postponing plans to make fuel retailers report when stock is unavailable. In the rare cases where there are outages of fuel grades on a forecourt, the operator will be dedicating their time to addressing that problem. Forcing them to make another report would introduce another manual system on top of all the bureaucracy and administrative time that comes with running a fuel site. It is sensible to review the need for availability reporting once the scheme is up and running.
“ACS is pleased to have worked in close partnership with the Petrol Retailers Association and Fuels Industry UK to explain the impact of this proposal, including new conducting consumer research showing that motorists experience excellent availability of fuel. Our attention is now turned to the implementation of the fuel finder scheme at the end of the year.”
More information about the Fuel Finder scheme and the CMA investigation that preceded it is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/road-fuel-price-data-scheme
