Do Electricity companies have right of entry to a property or do they need a warrant?

Terrylw1

If they are attempting to gain extry for safety reasons, it's in accordance with the obligations they have as part of the licence conditions. This states that the meter must be viewed every 2 years by someone competant to diagnose a potential safety issue. The reading element is largely irrelevant.

They can request a warrant to do this.

This is where things can differ with the warrant. If the warrant officer is out their considering fitting a PPM, he/she will abort and report this tenancy issue direct to the Supplier. They will then have to chase it all up and get accounts resolved.

However, this property has been split into 2. This will mean a new MPAN is out there somewhere which the other meter should be attached to.

The question is, what is your MPAN and which Supplier has got it registered? If no Supplier is registered and the meter is a new seperate one to the new supply, then something has gone badly wrong in the new connections process and you need to obtain a Supplier, which you are free to choose.

Like I say, it depends on what the warrant is for. Safety concerns will be enforced as it's for your safety. If the warrant is raised for debt concerns, then the warrant officer will be stuck in terms of serving it when he/she spots all of this.

From a disconnection point of view, a fuse can be pulled or a meter removed. A PPM is preferred for debt recovery though since power is still required by a tenant.

If they sent it out for a PPM fit and found a different tenant, it would get aborted and seen as a Supplier issue to resolve before it should have gone that far in the 1st place.

spiro

KTP1 wrote: »

Is it relevant that these letters are being sent to another person previously resident of the other flat rather than to me?

This implies you have not told them you are living there. If this is the case you need to be aware that the 12 month back billing rule does not apply and they will charge you for everything used.

Have you been forwarding this post to the old occupant or 'return to sender, no longer at this address'? If neither, this is an offence.

Yes they can obtain a warrant and either swap the meter for a ppm or just pull the fuse and wait for the occupant to contact them. Whatever they do, the cost of doing it will be added to what you owe so you will be better off, by several hundred pounds, phoning them.

keystone

Without passing "moral judgement" it seems daft to me that you have continued to "use" electricity for a further 2 months since your last thread without doing anything about your situation. I suspect the letter says something about effecting entry which you are not telling us about and the purpose of this thread is to elicit information on how you can circumvent that happening whilst continuing to ignore correspondence and avoiding paying for the electricity you are using.

So I can sort of accept (at a serious stretch) that you were unaware for two years that you were using electricity and not paying for it but you have certainly been aware since August 2010.

I really think you need to talk to these people and quickly.

Cheers

grahamc2003

It's an interesting situation - but some things puzzle me about it. I've read yuour previous thread and this one and I'm confused.

You say the meter is registered to your neighbour, and that a supplier supplies that meter. You also state that no bills have been sent for 6 years for that account. Well, how do you know that, since they would have gone to your neighbour and not you? Have you asked your neighbour whether a bill for that meter has been sent to him? If you have, then your neighbour too must know that the meter and your supply is registered incorrectly. Surely, if someone knows someone else's supply is wrongly being billed (or potentially billed) to their own property, then they'd get on the blower pretty quickly wouldn't they? I certainly would.

It also seems strange that you 'intercepted' a letter addressed to your neighbour (even if the name was incorrect). That really is none of your business, and obvioulsy it should be up to your neighbour to take whatever actions he sees fit with it - certainly, if the letter is threatening any court action or execution of rights of entry etc, your neighbour needs to know about it.

I agree with others - if you are in a hole, stop digging. (In your case, it appears you are also digging a hole for your neighbour). Your minimum cost of all this will come about by you taking the initiative to own up (although the supplier may deduce that you are only owning up now because you know that they are now onto you). I wouldn't expect the minimum cost to be cheap though - especially since you have stated you have had your heaters on full blast (..... rather than just the two I’ve been the owner when I've had the electric heaters on full blast.)

KTP1_2

The meter is not new – it’s been there 6 years. The electricity company say they have been supplying but have no meter(MPAN?) details. From what I have read this kind of situation is more common than you would imagine.

I told them when I moved in I was living there. However at that point they could not identify the meter details as being one of their own. Would this mean a 12month back billing rule would apply?

I’ve not yet had a letter about effecting entry. But now my suspicions that one may be coming seem to have been confirmed.

The letter suggests that no bills have been sent. Plus I expect the neighbours would notice if they were paying two sets of bills. The letter was to the neighbouring flat but to a name I hadn’t seen before. I opened it as I guessed, correctly it seems, that it may relate to my own flat.

The bill will indeed be high. What’s interesting is how much of it I will be liable for.
How can they distinguish how much I ran up and how much was run up by the previous occupants. I presume when the electricity was actually used is also relevant since the price of it has likely changed over the past six years.