Gas capped off without permission

dannya1978

Hi,

We have a property that has been let out to a tenant who has clearly got into financial trouble......either way we agreed to an amicable end to the contract and they left at end of October. The property needed considerable work to bring up to a reasonable standard following neglect, rubbish left everywhere, smoking in the house etc. We went to start the renovation last week and the gas company had changed the locks, broke in with a warrant from court, replaced the meter for a pre-payment and capped the gas off!

Has anyone experienced this before? Are they within their right to do such a drastic action? I wanted to know my rights before I contact the company. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Deleted User]

dannya1978 said:

Hi,

We have a property that has been let out to a tenant who has clearly got into financial trouble......either way we agreed to an amicable end to the contract and they left at end of October. The property needed considerable work to bring up to a reasonable standard following neglect, rubbish left everywhere, smoking in the house etc. We went to start the renovation last week and the gas company had changed the locks, broke in with a warrant from court, replaced the meter for a pre-payment and capped the gas off!

Has anyone experienced this before? Are they within their right to do such a drastic action? I wanted to know my rights before I contact the company. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

That doesn't sound like "without permission" to me.  That sounds like absolute and direct permission.

JoeCrystal

Did you let the supplier that you are their new customer on deemed contact?

Astria

"replaced the meter for a pre-payment and capped the gas off!"

Normally if they cap the gas off, I wouldn't have thought they'd replace the meter, but rather remove the meter and gap the gas at the meter installation point ? But that would certainly be a drastic action and typically only on request - I would expect a fully working gas supply but with a prepayment meter.

diystarter7

JoeCrystal said:

Did you let the supplier that you are their new customer on deemed contact?

This is where most LL's get lost as T's can chose their own supplier and the supplier won't have the LL's details/phone unless they do tell them. However, T's do not bother at times to tell the LL who they are with. 

Is it worth pursing them via small claims court for costs/etc, but I doubt it from what you have said

MWT

dannya1978 said:

We went to start the renovation last week and the gas company had changed the locks, broke in with a warrant from court, replaced the meter for a pre-payment and capped the gas off!

Has anyone experienced this before? Are they within their right to do such a drastic action? I wanted to know my rights before I contact the company. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

As long as you set up your account with the energy supplier to take responsibility on the day the tenant vacated the property then I'd say you have a valid complaint as long as the changes happened after the tenant left...

If you didn't do that, or the changes happened while your tenant was still in residence then you don't really have any basis for a complaint as it looks like they were following due process with the only customer they were aware of, your ex-tenant...

FreeBear

Astria said: Normally if they cap the gas off, I wouldn't have thought they'd replace the meter, but rather remove the meter and gap the gas at the meter installation point ? But that would certainly be a drastic action and typically only on request - I would expect a fully working gas supply but with a prepayment meter.

They may have decided that the boiler was "at risk" and capped the supply for that reason.

Is there a valid & current Gas Safe Certificate ?

Astria

FreeBear said:

Astria said: Normally if they cap the gas off, I wouldn't have thought they'd replace the meter, but rather remove the meter and gap the gas at the meter installation point ? But that would certainly be a drastic action and typically only on request - I would expect a fully working gas supply but with a prepayment meter.

They may have decided that the boiler was "at risk" and capped the supply for that reason.

Is there a valid & current Gas Safe Certificate ?

Ah yes, a gas safety check, didn't think of that, but if that's the case then the LL could be in trouble as isn't it their responsibility to ensure a GSC is carried out at least once a year?

JoeCrystal

diystarter7 said:

JoeCrystal said:

Did you let the supplier that you are their new customer on deemed contact?

This is where most LL's get lost as T's can chose their own supplier and the supplier won't have the LL's details/phone unless they do tell them. However, T's do not bother at times to tell the LL who they are with. 

Is it worth pursing them via small claims court for costs/etc, but I doubt it from what you have said

That is no excuse since you can find out who the property's gas supplier is online. I used this one when I moved in when the previous tenants left without giving any information. https://www.findmysupplier.energy/

stewie_griffin

Astria said:

"replaced the meter for a pre-payment and capped the gas off!"

Normally if they cap the gas off, I wouldn't have thought they'd replace the meter, but rather remove the meter and gap the gas at the meter installation point ? But that would certainly be a drastic action and typically only on request - I would expect a fully working gas supply but with a prepayment meter.

I suspect they haven’t capped the supply but put in a blanking disc as they were unable to test any gas appliances in the property. If this is the case then any gas safe engineer can remove it.

dannya1978

[Deleted User] said:

dannya1978 said:

Hi,

We have a property that has been let out to a tenant who has clearly got into financial trouble......either way we agreed to an amicable end to the contract and they left at end of October. The property needed considerable work to bring up to a reasonable standard following neglect, rubbish left everywhere, smoking in the house etc. We went to start the renovation last week and the gas company had changed the locks, broke in with a warrant from court, replaced the meter for a pre-payment and capped the gas off!

Has anyone experienced this before? Are they within their right to do such a drastic action? I wanted to know my rights before I contact the company. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

That doesn't sound like "without permission" to me.  That sounds like absolute and direct permission.

Without permission from the landlords i meant...but I get your jist