I have been paying my neighbours electric for 10 years without knowing and my landlord knew about it

Helen-Back

Hi everyone,

I will somehow try and keep this short, there is sooo much that has happened..

I am a private tenant living next door to my landlord and also next to another of his tenants.
After 3 years contacted the letting agent regarding the crazy electric bills I was getting and I asked if there is any way I could be paying for next doors electric, but he just laughed at me.
After 10 years I find out my electric is connected up to my neighbours house and although there are 2 electric meters, only my meter is actually paying the utility company. The meter for next door just shows the units that have been used from my meter.
Only after 10 years of living here, I discover from my landlord that I am meant to charge my neighbour (his tenant) for their usage, of course he tells me that he told me when I moved in but obviously this did not happen. Also in the last 10 years there have been several different people living there and no one has ever mentioned the electric to me.

It gets better...

Both my property and the tenant next door use oil to heat the home, the oil is supplied by the landlord as he has other properties he owns that also use oil and he buys the oil within a group to get a discounted oil price that I was told is passed on to me. I have never questioned this and always just paid the invoices supplied by my landlord.
Now being suspicious, I decided to ask for an invoice for the oil he was supplying to make sure it tallied up with the invoice he was giving me. This was actually suggested by my letting agent which manage the property.
The invoice I received from my landlord was of course the wrong invoice, sending me the latest invoice when we all know the oil was purchased and delivered months ago so obviously I need the previous purchase invoice for oil and not the latest one to match the invoice I was about to pay..
Well, all of a sudden my landlord and wife are going absolutely crazy shouting at me, telling me not to look at the invoices and just pay up.
After quite a few text messages, they are now saying I cannot see the invoice for the oil purchase and to just pay up.
They are currently not speaking to me and I have waited over a week for the letting agent to get back to me regarding this matter, and still waiting.

Looking at the oil prices on my invoices over the years and comparing it with the oil prices at the time clearly shows I have been getting a seriously bad deal.
For the last year or so, my landlord has been deducting the electric use from his tenant, from my oil bill and my landlord then issues a separate bill to his tenant for the electric and oil. I now realise my landlord has been giving me incorrect figures so I end up paying part of the electric, also I now find out from his tenant that he is paying more than the actual amount he is using.
Believe it or not, this is only part of the issue I am facing right now due to the business I was running is now failing, this in the main is due to once again, my amazing landlord.
My business turned over almost half a million last year, but this year I have no option but to stop trading completely due to a disagreement last year with my landlord. He promised he would make it very difficult for me regarding my business, and he kept his word on that! It's a long story!

What I have said so far is just the tip of the iceberg, now i'm writing all this down, I realise things are a lot worse than I have been telling myself.
I am up to date with my rent and all my bills (no idea how), apart from the last invoice from my landlord for utility, I am happy to pay as soon as I have the invoice for the purchase of oil. Obviously they cannot send me the invoice as it will show the profit he has been making from both utilities.
I have now been threatened with eviction on several occasions for not thinking the right way and asking too many questions.
I am now running out of money fast and I do not know what to do, my monthly cost of living is approx £4000 / £4500 and without my business I cannot possibly keep up.

Also, there is nothing about utility in my tenancy agreement.

Losing the will to live, urgent help required. I cannot afford to be evicted.

elsien

Is your business run from where you live?
Otherwise I can't see how a private landlord could impact on your business and would simply suggest upping sticks and moving elsewhere.
You need to help us out with a bit more context here with regards to the accommodation and business side of things. Bullet points would be fine. 
Plus an explanation how your cost of living (which is separate to business costs) can be so high? 

Helen-Back

Yes the business is run from where I live, the landlord owns warehouses on the land and I rent one of these from him. The problem is that the unit I use is falling down, not secure and if I said it leaks when it rains would be a big understatement.

Some stock has been ruined from the water and mould, I can no longer stock high priced items for obvious reasons, I only put up with it as I was promised a new unit once built.
I have been waiting for the new units for 2 years, but when they were built he rented them to other businesses instead.

This is all due to the census, because they came and knocked at LL door asking who lived in the property next door.
LL ordered me to sign the census, if I did not sign and show him the form filled out so he can hand it back to the census people, he would evict me and make it extremely difficult to run my business, his words not mine!

I don't like being intimidated and I am stubborn, I don't do what people order me to do when they have no authority over me, which is why this is now causing problems.

I cannot use the warehouse fully as the water that comes in is a joke, buckets are a waste of time unless you have 100 buckets. I also have a contract for this where it says something along the lines of LL responsibility to make sure it is dry inside.

Contracts and laws mean nothing to LL, all the warehouses don't have planning permission, same with his house and extensions etc, plus other stuff as well.

I need to be near my business, yes I could go get another warehouse but I cannot find anything suitable, is either too far away or too expensive.

Regarding cost of living, £2k month rent for 5 bed property, electric is about £200 a month, oil ££250 a month, wood for burner is about £800 per year, 5 adults in total live in this property and I pay for everything, total general outgoings are like I said before around £4k + a month. Business is totally separate.

I hope this helps.

Slithery

What does the tenancy agreement regarding the residential property have to say about bills?
Or is there just one agreement covering both the residential and business properties?

Helen-Back

 tenancy agreement regarding the residential property is for the property I am in and says nothing about utility that I have seen. 
Definitely nothing about the fact that I need to charge my next door neighbour for the electric they use. Letting agency knew nothing about it.
Also the electric company know nothing about it as well, and they don't seem to want to know at the moment.
Waiting for electric company to get back to me still, being slow.

Business contract is totally separate for unit.

dimbo61

5 bed property !
This could be a huge old country house or a modern A rated 1600 sq foot semi.
What is the EPC rating ?
EFG  rating is bad news for bills

D or better still C or B will mean lower bills 

sammyjammy

If there are five adults why are you paying for everything?

Helen-Back

I live with my partner and kids, my youngest is almost an adult. I don't charge them for anything, but they were helping with the business we ran, family business. 

Helen-Back

What is EPC rating?
What is EFG?
The property is very old and in the countryside.
The rating will be the worst possible, impossible to heat the house when it's real cold. that I don't care about, happy to pay my bills, just not happy to be taken advantage of.

Grumpy_chap

This sounds like the OP may well benefit through using the SoA template that is available in the DfW section of the forum so that they can understand their monthly expenses.  Monthly cost of living £4.5k per month is high (even allowing for £2k rent), unless that is total cost including discretionary spend and not just cost of existing (as it were).  OP does not need to share the SoA if they don't want to, just use it as their own tool.

This seems as though there are enough reasons to move on and find a different place to live and a different place to run the business from as the LL does not seem to be giving a fair outcome on either front and does not sound like they'll be amenable to resolve in a satisfactory manner.

If there are 5 adults in the property, why does the OP pay for everything?  There might be good reasons or good preferences but the other adults may need to make a contribution.

Helen-Back

Grumpy_chap said:

If there are 5 adults in the property, why does the OP pay for everything?  There might be good reasons or good preferences but the other adults may need to make a contribution.

I live with my partner and kids, my youngest is almost an adult. I don't charge them for anything, but they were helping with the business we ran, family business. I'm too easy going on them I know. But I don't like asking for anything from them.