Citizens Advice responded on 21 February 2023 to Ofgem's outline of its next steps on forced prepayment meter installations, saying the regulator was right to repeat its call for suppliers to check whether customers need to be moved off a prepayment meter1.
Gillian Cooper, Head of Energy Policy at Citizens Advice, said the charity had seen far too many cases of people struggling to pay their bills being forced onto a prepayment meter despite clear evidence this was not safe for them1. She said Citizens Advice was particularly worried about disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, citing research showing nearly one in five households including someone in these groups, who ran out of credit last year, went on to spend at least two days without an energy supply1.
"Ofgem is right to repeat our call for suppliers to check if customers need to be moved off a prepayment meter. If suppliers don't heed this call, the regulator must be ready to step in. If progress isn't made, the government must take action."
The charity's intervention sits within the framework of prepayment meters and vulnerable customer protections, which govern when a supplier may install a prepayment meter without consent. The rules on whether a supplier can force a household onto a prepayment meter are central to the cases Citizens Advice describes, as is the question of whether a smart meter can be switched to prepayment without consent.
Citizens Advice is the statutory consumer advocate for energy and postal markets, providing supplier performance information to consumers and policy analysis to decision makers1. It is also the largest provider of free, multi-channel debt advice, which it says gives it unique insight into the types of debts people struggle with1. Households with unresolved complaints about supplier conduct can use the energy complaints and redress routes covering the Ombudsman, Citizens Advice and Ofgem.
Why it matters for households
A prepayment meter requires credit to be loaded before energy is used, so a household that runs out of credit can be left without supply until it tops up. Citizens Advice's figure of nearly one in five affected households going at least two days without energy supply illustrates what that means in practice for disabled people and those with long-term health conditions1.
For a home's energy independence, the distinction between credit and prepayment payment matters: a prepayment meter shifts the risk of running out of supply onto the household, and moving back to credit billing depends on supplier conduct and the customer's circumstances. The supplier conduct rules on prepayment meters and customer debt and the process to move from prepayment to credit payment set out how that transition is handled. For those on smart prepayment, checking credit balances is covered in the guidance on how to check credit on a smart prepayment meter, and the differences between the two meter types are set out in smart meter versus prepayment meter.
What happens next
Citizens Advice states that if suppliers do not heed the call to check whether customers need to be moved off a prepayment meter, the regulator must be ready to step in, and that if progress is not made, the government must take action1. No further dated steps, deadlines or commitments from Ofgem or the government are set out in the announcement1.