Government orders ban on energy firms forcing struggling families onto prepayment meters iNews, 22 January 2023
Grant Shapps has written to the nation’s gas and electricity suppliers telling them to end the practice of forcibly moving people on to the controversial meters.
The Government has ordered the UK’s biggest energy companies to stop forcing struggling families onto prepayment meters as it pledged to crack down on “trigger happy” firms “mistreating” vulnerable customers following an i investigation.
The Business and Energy Secretary Grant Shapps has written to the nation’s gas and electricity suppliers telling them to end the “harmful and anxiety inducing practice” of forcibly moving people on to the controversial meters without taking “every step” to support them with their bills.
Mr Shapps says magistrates are being “overwhelmed” with applications for utility warrants, which allow debt agents acting on behalf of suppliers to force entry into homes to fit the meters.
His intervention comes after an i investigation found that hundreds of warrants are being granted in court rooms around the UK in just minutes. At one court in northern England, 496 warrants were granted in just three minutes and 51 seconds.
Mr Shapps has demanded that energy suppliers now voluntarily commit to ending the practice.
But asking them to do so voluntarily, rather than commit to an all-out ban, is unlikely to satisfy a swathe of cross-party MPs and anti-poverty campaigners who have been calling on the Government to impose an immediate moratorium with fears people could die this winter.
Prepayment meters are controversial because, with winter temperatures plummeting, they can push the country’s poorest families to cut off their own supply because they cannot afford to top up – leaving them in the cold and dark for days at a time and unable to cook, wash or keep warm.
Single mothers on prepayment meters have previously told i of being unable to heat their homes or use their ovens and of how their children have suffered asthma attacks and ended up in hospital with pneumonia this winter.
Mr Shapps said he also wants to see firms providing more support for struggling families – including giving them extra credit and debt “forgiveness” – before “leaping to the extreme” of forcibly installing a prepayment meters or remotely switching smart meters to prepayment.
Launching a five-point plan to protect households, he said: “Suppliers are clearly jumping the gun and moving at risk customers onto prepayment meters before offering them the support they are entitled to – I simply cannot believe that every possible alternative has been exhausted in all these cases.
“I am deeply concerned to see reports of customers being switched to prepayment meters against their will, with some disconnections of supply – and quite literally left in the dark.
“Rather than immediately reaching for a new way to extract money out of customers, I want suppliers to stop this practice and lend a more sympathetic ear, offering the kind of forbearance and support that a vulnerable customer struggling to pay should be able to expect.”
Pressure has been building on the Government to act after i’s investigation revealed that courts have granted 500,000 utility warrants since the last Covid lockdown, with the Magistrates’ Association saying they have “no choice” but to grant them.
i also revealed that warrants – which cost firms just £22 each – are being granted without justice officials knowing what the firms plan to do when their debt agents force entry and that the Ministry of Justice has no central record of why the warrants are being sought.