Retailers concerned about complying with the forthcoming Fuel Finder scheme, which will mandate all petrol stations in the UK tell the government their fuel prices within 30 minutes of any change, are set to be offered a software solution from EdgePetrol.
The firm, which is widely used by forecourts to help monitor rivals’ prices, analyse margins and manage wetstock, is developing a “compliance module” that will automatically share sites’ pricing with the government scheme.
The module will be available in December of this year, ready for when Fuel Finder is set to go live in January. It will be offered as a “bolt-on” that can be incorporated into Edge’s standard software suite, while the module will also be offered as a standalone product for firms that don’t currently use Edge but want to ensure compliance with Fuel Finder. Failing to share prices in a timely fashion or not informing the scheme of grade outages will bring penalties of up to up to 1% of an undertaking’s turnover, a daily amount of 5% of turnover, or both.
Regardless of whether the integrated or standalone option is chosen, Edge’s module will electronically liaise with VE3 Global, the firm selected by the government to run Fuel Finder. Sites’ fuel prices will be automatically shared with VE3 within the mandated 30-minute window, while the module will inform VE3 if a site has unavailable grades of fuel.
An audit trail will be created by the module for peace of mind while, should any connectivity issues occur, operators will receive an alert and can use a manual override function share prices and ensure compliance.
Fuel Finder is being introduced after the Competition and Markets Authority determined that “retail margins in fuel retail have risen significantly since 2019” and “competition between retailers has weakened in recent years”. The contract to operate the scheme was awarded to VE3 by the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero.
