Energy: dereliction of duty

By Richard North - December 6, 2022

Writing on the subject of warrants of entry to fit prepayment meters, last month, I observed that a significant part of the problem was the failure of the court system properly to perform its legal duties and vet each warrant application made by the utility companies.

Taking this issue further and adding significant extra information is Dean Kirby in yesterday’s iNews, fronting a story headed: “UK energy debt crisis revealed as half a million warrants granted for forced prepayment meters”.

The report details an investigation carried out by Kirby who finds that that debt collecting agents acting on behalf of the nation’s biggest gas and electricity companies have been handed 490,388 warrants to force their way into properties since July 2021. This compares with the 49,552 electricity and gas prepayment meters that were installed under warrant in 2021, according to Ofgem figures,

The current detail has been obtained from the Ministry of Justice using Freedom of Information laws, which also show that 321,213 warrants have been issued from January 1 to November 8 this year. Another 4,822 warrants had been granted in Scotland up to the end of October 2022.

In October alone, 34,895 warrants were granted in England and Wales. With energy firms’ agents apparently able to choose which courts they use – often hundreds of miles from customers’ homes – Portsmouth magistrates are granting up to 13,200 warrants a month, having issued 176,648 warrants between July 2021 and November 2022.

Leeds magistrates have seen the cases increase by 88 percent, having issued 56,658 warrants in the same period. Croydon, Teesside and Wigan have seen them rise by more than 50 percent, issuing respectively 34,654, 20,009 and 32,281.

The vast bulk of warrants were uncontested by customers, most probably because they were not notified of the hearings which, in any event, may be long distances from their homes.

Kirby says his paper had difficulties in trying to find out when and where the utility courts were sitting, with one official saying when they rang to find out: “You don’t want to go there”.

Another official at a different court described how the cases were being processed by administrators through an online application register, adding: “If there are no withdrawals, they are all approved. Then we have to deal with the complaints”.

Apparently, it became standard practice for courts to deal with the warrants by telephone in October 2019, the same year the online warrants register was rolled out by the HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Only around half of all magistrates’ courts deal with the cases.

What sets this report apart, though, is that Kirby did at last manage to attend a court session, where warrant applications were being processed. He tells of the “obscure court process”, which is something of an understatement, complaining that the magistrates who authorise them “have little or no oversight of people’s vulnerability or health issues”.

At one court in the North of England, Kirby found that magistrates signed off a single batch of 496 utility warrants in just three minutes and 51 seconds, as a debt agent representing several major energy firms dialled in by telephone, with no actual physical presence in the court.

This drives a cart and horse through the government’s own code of practice on powers of entry, issued under Section 48 (1)(a) of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. It also breaches the provisions of the Rights of Entry (Gas and Electricity Boards) Act 1954 (as amended).

As a reminder, Section 2 of this Act, states that the magistrates have to work to “sworn information in writing” from the utilities, that access is “reasonably required”, that they are entitled to fit the meters and that “the requirements (if any) of the relevant enactments have been complied with”.

Although the provisions are vague and ambiguous, the provisions are specific enough to make it clear that applications should be scrutinised individually, on a case-by-case basis, which precludes any idea of bulk processing.

This is a complete abrogation of the duties of the Justices and a denial of the rights of the people subject to the warrants. It is no part of the duties of the Magistrates to act as “rubber stamps” for the utilities.

Furthermore, where – as Kirby indicates – “cases were being processed by administrators through an online application register”, the court is probably acting illegally, as the 1954 Act specifically allocated the power to a Justice of the Peace, with no provision for delegation to officials.

In another probable gap in the procedure, the Act requires the “information” to be laid by the Utilities (designated as the “operator”) or by an employee. There does not seem to be any provision for a debt collection agency to make applications for warrants.

The failures by the courts to follow statutory procedures is one of the most fundamental breaches of their duties to ensure fair play and the protection of the rights of the individual. Instead, the courts have chosen to act as the enforcement arms of the utilities, milking the system for fees.

It is a pity in his report that Kirby didn’t note that the courts were paid £20 a pop for each warrant issued. When he watched the magistrates signing off a single batch of 496 utility warrants in just three minutes and 51 seconds, his narrative would have been far more powerful if he had pointed out that they had earned for their organisation just short of £10,000 – an equivalent hourly rate of £150,000.

With 490,388 warrants having been issued since July 2021, that amounts to just short of £10 million having been paid into a limited number of courts, the greediest being Portsmouth magistrates who have milked the system for the best part of £3.5 million, extracted mainly from the struggling poor.

That this dereliction of duty is very far from an academic issue is illustrated by Kirby with a number of case studies. One refers to mother-of-three, Stacy, who lives in London. She says her teenage son was alone in their flat when he discovered a number of men at the door.

The care worker, who had been in a dispute with the supplier over an estimated reading, says she had not been notified they had applied for a warrant to force entry. She said: “I was at work. My son was terrified. He said, ‘there are men at the door trying to get in to the flat’.

She tells Kirby, “I ran home. My son was shaking. He was really frightened. One of the men said he was from our energy supplier. It felt like we were being violated. It was horrible”.

Stacey felt she had no option eventually but to let the men in after they agreed to put £10 on the meter. She now spends some days without electricity or gas, saying credit that used to last a week now lasts only a couple of days, but tries to manage the blackouts so her electricity goes off while she is at work.

If it does go off at night, she needs to borrow a power bank from a neighbour so she can top up the meter because the device needs electricity to work.

Without notice given, this would have been an illegal warrant but, despite the bleatings of the numerous debt and “fuel poverty” charities, when thugs waving a piece of paper turn up at the doorstep without notice, sometimes with dog handlers, the people on the front line are invariably on their own.

What we actually need is a repeat of the community solidarity of 1938 when tenants in the East End of London had organised a rent strike and maintained flying pickets to see off the hired thugs who came to enforce evictions, fighting off bailiffs with shovels, rolling pins and saucepans.

After all, if the courts can’t even obey the law of the land, there is no good reason why ordinary citizens should not respond to their illegality in a time honoured fashion.