Hawk Management in Hackney Wick forcing tenants to pay over market rate for their energy

udogie12

Hawk Building Management - the company that manages Stonemason House and Bagel Factory in Hackney Wick are forcing their tenants to pay over the market rate for their hot water and heating.

Hawk BM has subcontracted Data Energy - an 'energy brokerage' to handle supply and billing of hot water and heating for it's residents.

Without prior warning, Data Energy more than double their prices, from 28.11 /kWh to 61.8 /kWh for gas supply.

Hawk BM do not allow it's tenants to switch to a cheaper provider, effectively cornering it's residents into paying over the market rate for their energy.

How can this be legal and fair? What can be done to hold Hawk BM to account? Why is the energy price guarantee not applied in this instance?

DullGreyGuy

What "market rate" are you looking at? 

Presumably they have a central boiler producing the hot water for all the units and proportionally charge the bill to each unit based on useage?

A setup like that will be buying gas/electricity at a commercial rate, historically this has been good for tenants as commercial gas was cheap, big boilers are efficient etc. Then obviously last year happened and the government were very generous with capping domestic gas supply but much more limited on commercial gas... look at the restaurants etc going out of business because of the utility prices rocketting. 

Its fair/legal because the government decided it only wanted to significantly help residential customers and not commercial customers and indirectly those in these types of setup are commercial customers.

CSI_Yorkshire

udogie12 said:

Hawk Building Management - the company that manages Stonemason House and Bagel Factory in Hackney Wick are forcing their tenants to pay over the market rate for their hot water and heating.

Hawk BM has subcontracted Data Energy - an 'energy brokerage' to handle supply and billing of hot water and heating for it's residents.

Without prior warning, Data Energy more than double their prices, from 28.11 /kWh to 61.8 /kWh for gas supply.

Which is it then?  Are they a gas supplier or a heat and hot water supplier?

I wasn't aware that there was a market rate for heat supply.