Receiving gas but my flat not registered to a suppier?

[cabriochris]

I recently moved into a flat I have bought as a part of a part buy/part rent scheme with the local authority. Now the flat has only been built a few years ago and had one person in there before me.

Basically I have been trying to find out who supplies my gas so I can ring up the company and advise them I have moved in but whoever I phone, they do not have any records of supplying gas. I have phoned Transco who I gather have details of all gas supplies in the UK and they have told me that my flat doesn’t exist on there database and there are no records of my flat never having gas supplied. Obviously this is not the case.

My question is what do I do now? Do I register with a new gas company, do I have to register my meter first. Although the person before said they were with N Power I don’t believe this is the case and from what I am thinking, they haven’t paid any gas bills ever and have been receiving it free. N Power have no record of the flat, nor do any other companies. I am now worried as will I get the bill for 2 years of gas when I wasn’t there, who is liable to pay? Do I just ignore it and carry on getting free gas?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Michael Browne]

Have you taken a meter reading, maybe a dated digital picture too.

Your completion documents will prove when you took possession

You can find out who your gas supplier is by calling the Meter Number Helpline on 0870 608 1524.

[chris1977]

Hi Cabriochris. I'm going through a similar situation at the moment. You may be in an apartment block with one central meter - this will be registered with Transco and probably supplied by NPower. Each tenant should then have an individual meter in their own flat which allows them to pay only for the energy they have used.

In my case, I found this out when I accidentally opened my landlord's mail which was addressed to my flat. Still trying to establish how to pay for my own energy consumption though as I'm yet to locate my gas meter and there's not a mention of this in my lease. Not looking forward to the gas bill - I've been here since August

[Clare_L]

If it is a newish built property, it may well be supported by an IGT (independant gas transporter) in which case Transco may not have the information for this. Do you have any meter details like an MPR number? Or even your meter serial number. You can then call pretty much any supplier and ask which IGT company is responsible from that information and then they will be able to tell you who the supplier it is. The reason no company may have a record of your address, is that if it is a new build it may still be registered under the developers with a plot number with sometimes a temporary postcode to add to the confusion.

[pelham9]

How is that a new built house can be connected to and use a gas supply without Transco being aware. Surely whoever built the house and connected the supply must apply to Transco to do this.

I moved into a new build over a year ago. Transco did indeed have all the details and informed me that the supplier was British Gas. BG however totally denied that the address existed. A week or two later I started to get bills to my address for another person for the period before my move! It took over nine months to sort this out.

New buids are bad news! - the utility systems cannot cope with new builds.

[Clare_L]

What I should have said is that Transco would not know who the supplier is. They could probably tell you who the IGT is for your property, but that should say on the meter itself. You then call the IGT and they will be able to tell you who supplies the property, but you need to give them the meter serial number as that is unique to your property. Any details they then have for your address that may be incorrect, ie still showing as a plot number, can be sorted. The utility systems CAN cope with new builds if the correct information is given to them, not only by the customer but also by the builders.

[pelham9]

They do not however sort anything out themselves. Why should it be customers and builders who have to do the work for them?

When moving into an apartment of a new build block of twelve 15 months ago it became very clear that Natiomnal Grid had every single meter number connected to a wrong apartment. They also had addresses with a district and postcode that referred to an old peoples' home over 2 miles away. Everybody was therefore incorrectly billed. It took me over three months to find out that my supplier was in fact BG who then started billing me at no 10 for gas used at number 12. They at first said they did not supply me as my flat did not exist!

It was quite clear to me that this chaos should be sorted out between the National grid and the suppliers by making a site visit but though I suggested this a number of times nobody was prepared to do this
I am now getting proper bills but it took nearly a year to get there and some people here still get incorrect bills with threats of disconnection.

Surely they should not rely on builders and customers to sort this kind of situation for them. They should be sorting this themselves particularly if they are repeatedly told by customers and meter readers that the neters are not connected as they think.

The pipes and meters belong to National grid and their engineers must have connected them so the errors was entirely theirs. They sit in their offices and expect us to phone them on expensive phone numbers when all that was necessary was a morning visit by one man.

Their systems are NOT capable of dealing efficiently with new builds because they do not have a system to sort out problems.