“Therefore, visiting the property may be the first opportunity to directly engage. Alternative solutions can still be established at this point, including signposting the customer for further financial support and/or mitigating further arrears.”
The firm said it has committed to not remotely switching customers’ smart meters to prepayment over this winter unless a customer requests it, adding: “We have further enhanced our processes around assessing and identifying vulnerabilities and our approach, therefore, to the installation of prepayment meters.”
Energy firm E.on said in correspondence with the MP it has committed to not requiring customers to repay debt on their accounts until the end of March.Ofgem says forced entries should only ever be a last resort where it is “safe and reasonably practicable” and it has banned prepayment meter installations for the most vulnerable customers. Suppliers’ obligations are “clear”, it says.
But James Anderson, who supports elderly, disabled and low income energy customers after setting up the Disability and Elderly Plumbing and Heating Emergency Repair in Lancashire in 2017, toldhe has personally seen vulnerable people on prepayment meters who are in desperate circumstances this winter.
He said: “These meters guarantee the firms take their money but they also take away the fundamental rights of children, the elderly and the vulnerable. They are being put in a position where they have to go into debt or go into danger. I know that vulnerable people are on these meters because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.Topics
deankirby_ 📹 The Energy minister also said he would raise the issue with the Ministry of Justice after Green MP Caroline Lucas said she was “alarmed by the forcible installation of prepayment meters'