UK energy debt crisis revealed as half a million warrants granted for forced prepayment meters
Investigation
Nearly half a million warrants allowing energy firms to forcibly install pre-payment meters in the UK’s poorest homes have been granted since Britain came out of the Covid lockdown.
Nearly half a million warrants allowing energy firms to forcibly install pre-payment meters in the UK’s poorest homes have been granted since Britain came out of the Covid lockdown, it can be revealed.
An i investigation has found that debt collecting agents acting on behalf of the nation’s biggest gas and electricity companies have been handed more than 490,000 warrants to force their way into properties since July 2021.
Since October last year, the number of warrants issued in England and Wales has risen to 18 percent.
i can also reveal how the warrants are being granted through an obscure court process in which magistrates who sign them off have little or no oversight of people’s vulnerability or health issues.
At one court in the north of England, magistrates signed off a single batch of 496 utility warrants in just three minutes and 51 seconds, as a debt agent representing several major energy firms dialled in by telephone.
Pre-payment meters are controversial because they are a more expensive way to buy energy, and can leave customers facing a choice between self-disconnecting their electricity or being pushed deeper into debt.
The investigation comes as families across the country are facing the pressure of a deepening winter fuel crisis. National Energy Action has warned that 8.4 million households will be in fuel poverty by April.
Matthew Cole, the head of the Fuel Bank Foundation, which supports people in a fuel crisis, said: “We are seeing people who are new to fuel poverty. We can hear the panic in their voices. They can see the cliff edge approaching.”
Ofgem figures suggests only 49,552 pre-payment electricity and gas meters were installed under warrant in 2021.
Energy firms insist that not all the warrants they obtain are enforced as they later come to arrangements with customers.
However, customers described calling the police on engineers trying to force their way into their homes and in some cases prevented them from entering.
Data obtained by i from the Ministry of Justice using Freedom of Information laws reveals that 490,388 pre-payment meter warrants have been granted in England and Wales since July 2021, including 321,213 from January 1 to November 8 this year. Another 4,822 warrants had been granted in Scotland up to the end of October 2022.
In October alone, 34,895 warrants were granted in England and Wales. With energy firms’ agents apparently able to choose which courts they use – often hundreds of miles from customers’ homes – Portsmouth magistrates are granting up to 13,200 warrants a month.
Leeds magistrates have seen the cases increase by 88 percent, while Croydon, Teesside and Wigan have seen them rise by more than 50 percent. The vast bulk of warrants were uncontested by customers.
i faced difficulties in trying to find out when and where the utility courts were sitting, with one official saying when we rang to find out: “You don’t want to go there”.
Another official at a different court described how the cases were being processed by administrators through an online application register, adding: “If there are no withdrawals, they are all approved. Then we have to deal with the complaints.”
It became standard practice for courts to deal with the warrants by telephone in October 2019, the same year the online warrants register was rolled out by the HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Only around half of all magistrates’ courts deal with the cases.
Court warrants are used by energy companies to forcibly install pre-payment meters when people are heavily in debt on their bills. They can also reportedly remotely switch smart meters to pre-payment without needing a warrant to access a property.
A former energy company worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, described how engineers had turned up to forcibly fit the meters with a locksmith and a dog handler and how the police would sometimes be called in advance.
They told i they feared the meters could cause excess deaths this winter, adding: “It’s a national scandal”.
One man had described being left “shaken” when three “thugs” unexpectedly turned up at his door with a warrant. A woman with children said she dialled 999 after a panicked neighbour told her three men were inside her house.
Campaigners have urged the Government to ban energy firms from forcing people on to pre-payment meters this winter.
Gillian Cooper, head of energy policy for Citizens Advice, said: “Switching people onto pre-payment meters when they fall into debt is disconnection by the backdoor. Hundreds of thousands could be left in cold, dark homes this winter if they can’t afford to top up.”
Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “Energy firms keep trying to make us believe that they only use the courts as a last resort to recover debts. This investigation shows that is just not the case.
“Pre-payment meters should only ever be used with a customer’s express, informed consent. Forcing them on households against their will this winter is inhumane and will cause increased pressure on the NHS.”
An Ofgem spokesperson said that forced entries “should only ever be a very last resort”, and that the watchdog had “banned installations entirely for the most vulnerable customers”.
“Suppliers’ obligations are clear. Out standards of conduct contain enforceable overarching principles that suppliers must treat all domestic consumers fairly and that suppliers need to make extra effort to identify and respond to the needs of their customers in vulnerable situations.
“We also recently wrote to all suppliers to ask them to stop the process of remotely switching customers on to pre-payment meters.”
Energy UK, the industry trade body which represents firms including Centrica Energy, Scottish Power and EDF Energy, says suppliers face “difficult decisions” in dealing with customers in debt on their bills and the warrants are a last resort after “exhausting all other options” and after vulnerability checks are carried out.
A spokeswoman said: “Pre-payment meters have been a way of helping customers monitor and budget for their energy usage, but suppliers are very aware of the challenges millions of customers are facing right now.
“There are difficult decisions around indebted customers as suppliers are also required to try to prevent them falling further into arrears and given that any increase in bad debt will ultimately have to be recouped from customers’ bills.”
Source: https://inews.co.uk/news/uk-energy-debt-crisis-revealed-half-million-warrants-granted-for-forced-prepayment-meters-2008884?ITO=newsnow (Behind a pay-wall]
