HELP!..Don't want neighbour's elect equipt running through home!?

Chat2Mac

Hi.
I'm writing on behalf of a relative who has not used supplied gas or elect in her own home for many years.
She is a carer, so spends fewer weeks each year in her own abode - and when she is there, makes do with solar lamps, the open fireplaces, fuel stove, etc, etc.
Looking towards the future, she's inclined to further her usage of energy by renewable means, if anything.
This was partly choice & partly to save her sanity/finances/stress levels after years of harassment by the utility companies who would not resolve metering faults, continuously inflated their estimations (& in-turn, dd payments), forced entry in her absence to perform periodic "mandatory meter safety checks", then installed a prepayment meter which made matters worse (to recover a ridiculous disputed figure plus perpetual standing charges to pay for its existence), and so forth...
Every time she'd return home after an absence she'd be armed with hideous sums of credit to feed the meter which it would instantly chew up and rarely leave anything left over for an actual lightbulb.
Eventually, she had the Gas & Elect disconnected at her request several years ago. Even then, the sympathetic electricity engineer noted that there was nothing owing on the meter, but said he could not remove it entirely. Instead, he removed all connections to it so there could be no mistaking that any further increments (its display continues to whirr away and acrue to this day) were not from customer consumption but purely a prepayment meter trying to generate revenue to justify its existence.
Apologies for the length of the last paragraph, which is not the actual issue of this thread but serves as background (plus it just makes me so angry thinking about it).
THE CRUCIAL QUESTION IS THIS:
Given that she is no longer a gas or electricity supplier's customer herself (and has no desire to be in the future) can she insist that Scottish Power removes its equipment from her home and/OR refuse to let them route any further equipment/cabling internally through the front of her house to her upstairs neighbour????? And if so, how to proceed?
(4-in-a-block, terraced home)
Reason being:
The upstairs owner is upgrading the central heating for his tenant, and during the course of the preparation, a 'job-stopper' was discovered in that the electricity earth was giving inadequate readings.
This earth cabling runs from the upstairs residence, down through the inside of my relative's front entrance where the fuse box is, then proceeds under her front path, garden, and ultimately the street. After being messed about by successive 'emergency crew' no-show-cancellations, long wasted days, and lengthy complicated return bus+train journeys, the 'emergency' team finally concluded that the fault does not lie in the internal section of cabling - which they tested, so must be in the section under garden to street (which yet another team needs to dig up, fault-find, then fix or more likely re-cable).
Nevertheless, further internal access and disruption will still be required to the downstairs abode (along with it, no doubt, further costly wasted journeys and inconvenience to both she and the disabled person she cares for full-time, several hours away).
Surely it would be better for all concerned if the faulty cable isn't dug up and re-routed again THROUGH THE PROPERTY OF A PERSON THAT DOESN'T EVEN USE AN ELECTRICITY SUPPLY OR WANT TO BE ON THE GRID (!?!) - but instead, for a new cable to routed from the street directly to where the upstairs property's fuseboard/meter/etc are located at the side/rear?...(corner property)
Thanks for reading.
SOME CLUED-UP ADVISE WOULD BE OHH SO GRATEFULLY APPRECIATED :-)

GuessWhoDIB

Nowt Ya Can Do Let Them get on with the job

chanz4

Sounds like the landlord did the job on the cheap when making upstairs, I bet your friends usage was correct and soemthing unkown was drawing the energy x2 meters dont go wrong.

Inregards to the routing of cables, there are strict guidelines due to how much voltage they carry so are not able to go someways

undaunted

The ever dreadful Npower have refused to follow a customers express instructions to remove their equipment from a property during a protracted dispute & this will be the subject of a court hearing in due course.

In theory however you can have a supply removed - examples of how to go about it here

http://www.northernpowergrid.com/page/services/disconnections/single.cfm

http://www.southern-electric.co.uk/GasAndElectricity/YourMeter/ChangesToYourMeterAndSupply/

http://www.edfenergy.com/products-services/large-business/PDF/MBC-WF-TER-001-1008.pdf

spiro

Is she the freeholder or leaseholder of the property?

If she has the supply removed it could make the property difficult/impossible to sell in the future because it will cost £000s to get it put back in.

cattie

What would happen to this relative if she ever became disabled & needed a carer herself & perhaps equipment to help with her condition? Surely it's a comfort to know that the possibilty of having the convenience of electricity & gas is there, just in case? Why on earth want to have the connections & meters removed completely?

HappyMJ

She also needs to switch to a supplier that has no standing charges such as Ebico. No usage = No bill due even on a prepayment meter.

chanz4

6 weeks for a new mpan, £1500 approx for a new supply install, £65 for a meter