Calls for Government to ban firms from making poor fit pre-pay meters

19 January 2023 , 22:32

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An estimated 3.2 million people could not afford to top-up their energy meter last year (Image: PA)

The Government is under mounting pressure to ban energy firms from forcing customers to have prepayment meters.

Groups including Fuel Poverty Action and the National Pensioner’s Convention yesterday (Thursday) ramped-up calls for the practice to be halted amid fears that some of Britain’s poorest households are being left without heating as temperatures plummet.

A recent report from Citizens Advice found an estimated 3.2 million people could not afford to top-up their energy meter last year.

It said more than one in five prepayment meter customers cut off in the past year spent at least 24 hours without gas or electricity, leaving them unable to turn the heating on or cook a hot meal.

It comes amid evidence that courts are routinely waving through applications from energy suppliers to force entry in people’s homes to fit the meters.

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one in five prepayment meter customers cut off in the past year spent at least 24 hours without gas or electricity (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

An investigation by the i newspaper found just 72 out of more than 500,000 such applications have been refused since July 2021.

Protestors took part at an event in Westminster yesterday to highlight the plight of those living in cold and damp homes.

Ruth London, Fuel Poverty Action co-founder, said, “We need an outright ban, and urgent removal of the hundreds of thousands of meters that have been installed where they are not safe or practical in defiance of suppliers’ licence conditions.

“The energy suppliers were quick to find men to drill out locks and break into homes to install these meters, now they must act quickly to take them out.

“People are being left in the cold and dark even when they are dependent on heat or on power for disability aids, medical equipment, for light and for charging phones.

“Every delay will lead to deaths.”

Campaigners warn tens of thousands could die if the Government doesn't act (PA)

Jan Shortt, general secretary of the National Pensioners’ Convention, said: “It’s shameful that anyone in this country should die as a result of the cold.

“Yet tens of thousands more will do so if the government does not act as a matter of urgency.”

Business Secretary Grant Shapps raised hopes this week that he was preparing to take action as he told MPs in the Commons he was preparing to write to the regulator Ofgem.

Labour has called for an immediate halt to the “shameful” forced installation of prepay gas and electricity meters.

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Shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband recently accused the government of a “dereliction of duty”.

Graham Hiscott