Sub meter on the apartment that I own?

jgwilson94

Hi there, hoping someone can offer some advice.
In December I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment which I own. I have seen this on forums with people who have landlords but not on an owned property. There is multiple apartments and a few houses within the large building I live in. And in one of the houses is the family who own the leasehold for the entire building. All the apartments are on sub meters and after our first 3 months, most of which was only my girlfriend living there as I was working away, we received a quarterly electric bill (apartment has no gas, all electric). The quarterly bill was an invoice from the leasehold owners and was extremely high, after we disputed it we have not been sent another bill for the next 7 months, we are guessing they are planning on giving us an annual bill at the 12 month mark. Can anyone offer any advice? We moved in thinking we could have our own supplier and be in control of our own bill rather than receiving an invoice from one of the households rather than the energy company as it seems to me we don’t even have a bill as they just get one bill and then use the sub meters to charge people. For all we know they could be inputting any price into the unit price per kwh. I’m not suggesting that would be the case but something just doesn’t feel right about it? All I want is my own bill from my own supplier.

Neil_Jones

Depends who's account the electricity is in.  If there are submeters its probably not you so you don't have your own supplier.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/cheap-gas-and-electricity/ - "If you rent your home you can save by switching, providing you pay the energy supplier directly (rather than paying your landlord)"

Also all electric properties will cost a fortune to run in these times.

Might be of interest:

https://www.utilityteam.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-electric-sub-meters-and-metering-for-property-managers

MWT

jgwilson94 said:

For all we know they could be inputting any price into the unit price per kwh. I’m not suggesting that would be the case but something just doesn’t feel right about it? All I want is my own bill from my own supplier.

They are not permitted to make a profit on the resale of electricity, but they may be on a business tariff not a domestic tariff depending on the other uses on that supply.

If it is a business tariff, they are not permitted to pass on any part of the CCL charges, or the VAT at 20%, it must be at 5%.

If there is a sub-meter, is it located where you can read it?

The details of the nature of the electricity supply would have been contained in the documents supplied to your solicitor during the purchase of the property, so should have been picked up then that there was an indirect electricity supply.