With power prices soaring out of control, it’s little wonder that thousands of British families can’t afford electricity. Every time Britain is hit with a bout of calm weather, wholesale power prices go through the roof.
In response to soaring wholesale power prices, the retail price cap that kept a lid on power bills over the last few years has been lifted (see above), such that power has now become a luxury item and forever out of reach for thousands of low-income households.
Add to that to the cost of the hundreds of £millions doled out in subsidies to wind power outfits to produce no power at all, and the tens of £billions they pocket, when they do, and Britain’s subsidised wind power-fixated energy policy looks positively obscene.
In the postwar period, British governments targeted policies that ensured that even the poorest households had access to reliable electricity, which came to be regarded as a birthright.
Those days are long gone.
Having created a market where power scarcity (and associated price gouging by the owners of the remaining dispatchable coal-fired and gas-fired power plants) follows calm weather and sunset, it was inevitable that those entities retailing the stuff would pull out all stops to recover a premium for any power actually delivered to those lucky enough presumed to be able to afford it.
Which brings us to the so-called Smart Meter; devices designed to both limit (or prevent) households’ access to electricity (think forced power rationing) and set the price that they pay for it, on a minute-by-minute basis, depending on scarcity. Which, as we just noted, now depends entirely upon the weather.
The Meters set up by energy retailers may not be altogether Smart, but their owners are certainly clever. At least in terms of the lengths that they’ll go to literally get a foot in the door, as Dean Kirby explains below.
Struggling energy customers facing ‘wild west’ system of warrants to force entry into homes
i news
Dean Kirby
20 December 2022
Energy firms are being handed the right to force their way into thousands of customer homes without justice officials knowing why the warrants are being granted, it can be revealed.
An investigation by i has discovered how magistrates are batch-processing hundreds of warrants in just minutes to allow debt agents acting on behalf of suppliers to force entry into homes to fit controversial prepayment meters.
The Ministry of Justice has now admitted it has no record of why access to homes has been sought, whether to forcibly install the meters or for other reasons.
It also said that, once inside a customer’s home, the energy firm could “exercise any other right of entry while there”.
The admission has raised further doubts about the level of oversight for warrants being issued by courts to energy firms to force entry into properties. It has also prompted accusations of a legal “wild west” leaving some of the UK’s poorest families at risk of having no gas or electricity this Christmas.
MPs have urged the Government to halt the forced installations this winter, telling the Commons in a two-hour debate they fear a “conveyor belt” of warrants is leaving vulnerable customers in the cold and dark – including terminally ill people returning home to die.
Caroline Lucas MP said: “These court warrants en masse are being carried out with disgraceful lack of due diligence and care.
“These court warrants amount to a mass exploitation of the vulnerable and the voiceless – and they must be banned immediately.”
Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Campaign, said: “It is deeply concerning to hear there is confusion at the heart of Government and the courts about what these warrants are for and why they are being secured.
“The Government needs to very quickly get a grip of this legal wild west, which is spiralling out of control while companies are continuing to force the poorest people in society onto these more expensive meters.”
Industry insiders have told i the process has gone “beyond rubber stamping” as thousands of warrants are “nodded through” each week in “huge batches” of up to 700 at a time.
The College of Policing has issued new advice after some police officers doubted the validity of the “extremely sparse” warrants, which are being granted over the phone by magistrates in a digital format with “wet ink signatures” no longer required.
A new system allowing firms to request these digital warrants over the phone was introduced in 2019, with the college telling officers: “The reasoning is to allow companies to produce the warrant on a tablet or other device if needed, instead of having to possess a paper copy.
i told earlier this month how magistrates at one court in northern England granted 496 utility warrants in just three minutes and 51 seconds as a debt agent representing several major energy firms dialled in by telephone.
Prepayment meters are controversial because they are a more expensive way to buy energy and can leave customers facing a choice between self-disconnecting their gas and electricity or being pushed deeper in to debt.
One woman has described how her daughter awoke with cold hands and had the worst asthma attack of her life as she struggles to feed their prepayment meter to keep it going.
The Ministry of Justice told i in a Freedom of Information response in November that courts had issued nearly 500,000 entry warrants in England and Wales since July 2021 specifically to allow firms or their agents to forcibly install prepayment meters.
But in an apologetic updated response after i‘s investigation was published, it has admitted it holds no data specifically on warrants granted for the installation of the meters.
It said: “The figures provided are for warrants of entry granted on behalf of energy companies but the reason for each cannot be broken down further.
Industry sources, however, insist that the vast bulk of all domestic forced entries are for fitting a prepayment meter.
One industry source with knowledge of the warrants system told i: “The court system is centralised. They are done in huge batches. There are hundreds if not thousands a week from different suppliers. The courts are stretched. I’m not sure there is significant scrutiny of the cases. If there are no objections, they are just nodded through.
“The worry, the big risk, is that the people in the most debt who do not engage with the process, who don’t open that letter about the court case, are usually those who are the most vulnerable.”
“They used to pull some out of the file and quiz the warrant officer. Now, it’s done over the phone and it’s even worse. It’s gone beyond rubber stamping. They don’t even stamp them anymore. Warrants are sent out electronically without even a signature and are not even printed out.”
Glasgow North East MP Anne McLaughlin urged the Government to halt self-disconnection for people on prepayment meters in a Commons debate she tabled on the issue last week, adding: “I am desperately worried that people are going to die – people who would have lived had this awful practice been outlawed.”
Ofgem says forced entries “should only ever be a very last resort” and “suppliers’ obligations are clear”. It is urging customers to check they are on their suppliers’ priority services register.
Energy UK, the industry trade body, says suppliers face “difficult decisions” in dealing with customers in debt and the warrants are a last resort after “exhausting all other options” and after vulnerability checks are carried out.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: “Energy companies are required to provide evidence on whether customers are vulnerable under oath when applying for a warrant and there are penalties for giving false information.”
i news
Remember when cheap and reliable power was a birthright?
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STOP THESE THINGS 
Dr Richard North has been on this scandal for some time.
This is his latest post.
https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/front-page/energy-calling-time-on-meters/
The situation in Great Britain MIGHT improve now that natural gas prices are going down, esp. when supplies from wind drop from 50% of demand to less than 10% and the difference is made up by generation from gas fired. Given the M*r*ns in charge the result will probably be a ban on gas.
At some stage the general public is going to be upset enough to resort to drastic action.
This whole problem can be traced back to the idiotic twits in governments all around the world and their obsession with unreliable energy.
They are culpable!
The priority in health matters is fuel for the body and fuel for the home. Whenever the Hustlers In Virology (a family junk science company) speak about saving lives we might take note if they make that heating and cooling is their priority or not, it never is their priority at all yet they claim they care about our health. May we suggest to governing bodies that from this point forward that instead of giving billions to vaccine companies for products that don’t save lives, and billions to “renewable energy” firms that provide products that don’t provide energy well and disrupt it, and to these drug companies that produce products that are known to be harmful, and are offered to us based on lies, and by companies that some are known criminals, that the billions could instead subsidize making sure no home is ever freezing or too hot THUS SAVING LIVES. We can have rules put in place that offers option that these meters monitor to make sure that people never freeze to death in their homes or make them suffer in excessive heat events. This would actually make sense also in these new “equity” schemes to apply these rules to not favor the companies and the portfolios of which too much energy keeps flowing a bit to bountifully while others are left to die. Thus it’s a win win for both the consumer and the electric provider, but huge loss for the pHARMa medical waste complex of which “medical treatment” is the 3rd leading cause of death in the modern world.