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Computer says GO.  Tenants say NO.

Tenants holding up placards saying "Lambeth We Need To Talk And You Need To Listen"

Background to a nightmare

A lot of Lambeth council tenants (about 3500 properties) live on estates with a heat network – a communal heating system that works like central heating for the whole building or the whole estate. And they pay a fixed amount to the council for that as part of their service charge. In April 2023, there was a huge 353% increase in the cost of this so some people were paying over £80 a week, for heat and hot water alone. The increase has been halved this year, but prices remain about 175% higher than they were two years ago. Unlike people with their own gas boiler, they can’t switch supplier, can’t turn it off, and can’t reduce the cost by cutting down on heat. 

On top of this, they started receiving threats of eviction, telling them that if they can’t pay this much, they can give up their homes.  And getting actual notices of seeking possession, and court proceedings – no matter if they are elderly or disabled or had young children. Obviously, people have been desperate. They tried to appeal to the council but it was like a brick wall.  

Council officers know what residents are facing. They have even been to some of the estates, and heard what people are facing, but their response has been: you must pay us your rent or leave. They have designated a service charge for heat and hot water as part of rent – despite the fact that there is no housing benefit for it and no regulatory limit on heat and hot water increases, like there is with rent and the domestic energy market. To square the circle, they make patronising suggestions that people take on a second job, work longer hours – even those with  children – or use payments intended for disability needs, or do just anything to raise money to pay them. A lot of tenants have been going hungry, and working day and night to try to raise these sums. Pensioners are giving Lambeth money they had saved up for their funeral. There are people pushed to the point of mental breakdowns, struggling to hold things together for their children.

Starting London Tenants Heat Campaign

Tenants and leaseholders came to London Tenants Federation and Fuel Poverty Action for support. Together, we gave them a hand in forming a group, which became Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign (LTHC). LTHC has regular meetings of tenants and some leaseholders from several estates, all with the same problem. We would like other Lambeth council estates on heat networks to join the campaign. It uses twitter @fight4heat_LBL and an email [email protected] as effective methods of getting its message out to the public and powers that be. LTHC also uses FPA’s website as a good signpost for people to learn about what is happening.  

LTHC wrote to Lambeth for over two months to get the council to speak to them. Courageously, LTHC members spoke out to the media. Tenants appeared twice on BBC TV, were in the national papers, local papers, on the Eddie Nestor show on Radio London. And they’ve been all over social media. A total of 69 housing campaigns and other related organisations signed an Open Letter to Lambeth supporting the tenants’ demands. By amplifying its demands through social media, news media and protest, the group finally got a meeting with the councillor responsible for housing. 

Recently LTHC organised a demonstration where attending tenants held one letter each of the words: “Lambeth, We need to talk and You need to Listen!”.  This idea, and help with the signs, came from tenants on a heat network in Camden. People do talk to each other – even across boroughs! And we’ve learned that Lambeth is a real outlier. Lots of places have had a steep rise in heat charges but nowhere else do tenants face eviction threats!  This is not a force of nature, which sadly cannot be helped. It is a choice that has been brutally applied. 

On 20 March, Lambeth finally agreed to meet LTHC. We met the Council’s cabinet member for housing, Maria Kay, and its income development manager, Mark Gillies, who is in overall control of administering rents. The councillor heard tenants say they have received letters threatening eviction proceedings and she said it shouldn’t be happening. Despite everything, she said they hadn’t been aware that people were getting notices of seeking possession for heat arrears. She and the income development manager promised to look into these cases because “this should not happen”. They also said that if people are paying they “should not be getting” letters, and Mark Gillies said he would investigate how that was happening.

So altogether, this was positive news!  Lambeth’s policy is not to evict on the grounds of arrears due to heat network charges. But we are aware that Lambeth has a long history of promising one thing and then saying the opposite, or saying one thing and doing the opposite. There has recently been a change of portfolio, so we may need to reinforce the message with a new cabinet member for housing. Some residents are justifiably very sceptical of anything Lambeth says, and also extremely angry about the way they’ve been terrorised. Their lives and their children’s lives have been turned upside down by this. 

In fact, a number of people have had notices of seeking possession since that meeting, and residents are still being told they have to find the money somehow or lose their homes. Maybe the message hasn’t trickled down to the officers yet?  Or the automated systems are in charge now? It has not only been threats – at least one case has been taken to court!

Enter the courts

On 19 April a twitter thread from Macintosh Court Residents Association (@court_sw16) reported that in a court case at the Gee St Courthouse, a judge had sided with a tenant who had been taken to court by Lambeth for service charge arrears.  The post says the judge “told Lambeth to sort themselves out . . . service charges and rent should be separated, she [the judge] cannot evict for service charge arrears, she said. Lambeth must not send him [the tenant] any more threatening letters or phone calls for 3 months while they sort this mess out.” The Residents Association says they have been told there are more summonses in the pipeline, but asks: “Is Lambeth Council really gonna force a bunch of our elderly and disabled to make this journey after being told not to waste the court’s time?”  

The judgement has not been made public, and it is unclear what is supposed to happen in three months’ time. Residents are left uneasy about their future. But this is still very encouraging. It has been LTHC’s position from the start that heat charges are not rent and cannot be the basis of eviction.  

Computer says GO

The point about separating heat charges from rent, referred to in the thread about the court case, is crucial. At the 20 March meeting, Maria Kay and Mark Gillies explained that possession notices were triggered automatically. Since then we’ve found out that Lambeth’s software makes no distinction between rent arrears and and heat charge arrears, so whenever your total arrears go over a certain amount, the computer sends out the notice of seeking possession. And despite all the complaints and the pleading letters and the calls to councillors and calls to the office, and supporting letters from advice agencies, and all the media, and 69 organisations signing an open letter written by FPA and LTF… despite all this, no one has seen fit to fix that little glitch in the software. Computer says go. 

Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if Lambeth’s computer software is allowed to defy both the council’s stated policy and a court, and continues to press for tenants to be evicted because of their heat charge arrears? Extraordinary things do happen these days. The Post Office’s computer saga is not the only case where people’s lives have been devastated, or indeed ended, by unhearing uncaring electronic machines. It is not the only case where the machine’s human masters were told – and knew – what was happening, and chose to allow it to continue. But in our meeting with the head of housing and homelessness and the income development manager on 20 March, it was explicit that they wanted to avoid a Horizon scandal in Lambeth. The head of housing said they would work with, not against, the residents, and would investigate what was going wrong and stop it happening. 

The question is – against a maverick assault on council tenants, what is the weight of  the combined forces of the tenants, leaseholders, other residents, supporters, sympathetic councillors and council officers, the housing movement, the many people fighting for fair energy pricing, the remaining legal protections available in the UK, and the imminent legislation on heat networks? Will all this be decisive in defending Lambeth tenants’ homes? Will we force the computer to blink first? 

Their software can and must be changed. There must be no such evictions and no more “automated” warning letters. Lambeth must urgently make public what they told us in our meeting: that they will not evict for heat arrears. It is urgent that they make this clear so they stop destroying their residents’ mental health. They must first notify the residents who’ve had these threatening letters, so people can sleep at night and start eating three times a day. They might want to consider an apology…

Then we have to make sure the heat and hot water actually works consistently, to an acceptable standard – on top of the high prices it is now very unreliable and inefficient as well. And the council has to work out payments that people can actually afford. But we are a long way from where we were when this campaign started. 

Computer says GO. Tenants say NO.  

Ruth London May 2024

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Guest blog: Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign

Lambeth Town Hall

LAMBETH RESIDENTS FACE EVICTION WHEN WE CAN’T PAY ENERGY BILLS

As seen on BBC Morning Live, 15th December 2024

This guest blog has been prepared by tenants and residents of several Lambeth housing estates who have come together to form the Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign, with support from Fuel Poverty Action and London Tenants Federation. More affected residents and other supportive organisations and individuals are now getting in touch.  

The blog includes the residents’ demands, background information, personal testimonies (anonymous and otherwise), statements of support, and their contact address.  They have written to Lambeth Council requesting an urgent meeting. 

Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign can be contacted at [email protected]

Go here to read it.

Still from Morning Live report
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Energy For All Petition Hand In – October 19th

FPA are campaigning for Energy For All, a universal, free band of energy to pay for necessities of heating, lighting and cooking. Please join over 600,000 people in signing our petition supporting the demand and share far and wide. Sign up for updates and to get involved!

We will be taking our petition to Downing Street on Wednesday 19th October at 2.30pm. We will assemble at George V Statue, Old Palace Yard, at 1pm to hear speeches. We hope you can join us on the day!

Can’t be there in person? Support #EnergyForAll from home by sharing social media content and joining our digital action. See our toolkit.

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Press Release: FPA and DPAC protest Ofgem’s abusive standing charge policies

Fuel Poverty Action and Disabled People Against Cuts have together written to Ofgem CEO Jonathan Brierley about the gross injustice of the present standing charges, including loading the cost of failed suppliers onto this part of people’s bills. [1] They say

“It is appalling that yet again Ofgem is punishing low income customers for its own failed regulation and the upside down priorities of the energy industry. …This is consistent with the blinkered approach that has led you to give “too much benefit to companies at the expense of consumers”, in the words of Christine Farnish, the Ofgem director who resigned last week.

Ofgem has claimed (2) that high standing charges are the only way to protect high users, some of whom are people with health needs for electricity, eg for electrical medical equipment. But the two groups suggest that Ofgem’s obligation to vulnerable customers is being abused as an excuse for policies that impoverish and endanger thousands of people, including many who are disabled people. They name instead several alternative ways to protect people with high energy needs – without impoverishing vast numbers of low income customers.

With Fuel Poverty Action’s proposal of Energy For All (e4a) each household would be entitled, free, to enough energy to cover basic needs, but people would pay a higher tariff for what they use above that amount. This would offer much needed security to all – including those who need more because of their health, disabilities, housing conditions, or family size. It would be paid for by the higher per-unit tariff on excess use, by windfall taxes and by ending the millions of pounds now poured daily into fossil fuel subsidies.

Other options listed include extensions of the Warm Home Discount, social tariffs, better disability benefits, and good safe insulation for vulnerable customers. And they say that companies that cannot fulfil their purpose of providing the energy people need at a cost they can afford, could – and must – be brought back into public hands.

Ruth London from FPA comments,

“Instead of looking at real, proportionate, workable changes to the current upside down pricing framework, Ofgem has chosen to continue hitting low income users harder than affluent neighbours. The standing charge means that however much they cut down their usage many people will never be able to pay their bills.”

Paula Peters of DPAC says,

“I’m a low energy user because I am terrified to switch it on and worrying about costs all the time. It’s making me permanently anxious as it is all of us. Last winter I was in a lot of pain with a cold house. I needed NHS intervention: a steroid injection and a Nebuliser at A & E.”

[1] https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Letter-to-Ofgem-re-decision-on-Standing-Charge-August-2022.pdf
[2] https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/follow-our-review-arrangements-recovering-costs-supplier-failure 

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A nice cup of tea 

On 26 May Rishi Sunak announced a £15 billion package of support for people struggling with energy bills, and although he didn’t dare say its name, a windfall tax on oil and gas companies’ current extraordinary profits.  

The windfall tax, called a temporary “Energy Profits Levy” was expected. The size of the support package was something of a surprise, a measure of the depth of the crisis the UK population is facing, and the depth of the crisis of the current government, which has, with impunity, partied while people die. The End Fuel Poverty Coalition, of which FPA is a member, has outlined numerous potholes in the distribution of these funds – operational issues for some renters, Prepayment Meter users, and others that could prevent some people from receiving what they are entitled to. We will be Below we focus on the amounts. 

The key offerings were:

£400 for every bill-payer and people on Prepayment Meters.

£650 each for the 8 million households surviving on welfare benefits, 

£300 for pensioner households, and

£150 for households who get non-means-tested disability benefits 

Many people can qualify for more than one, or even all of these sums. The chancellor has repeatedly claimed verbally that “most” people will get £1,200. The government’s website is more cautious: almost all of the eight million most vulnerable households across the UK will receive support of at least £1,200 this year. 

There was enough in the package to warrant considerable relief, and even joy at this new proof that, after all, the government can move when pushed. Some people have dared to hope that the fuel poverty crisis is solved now. But unfortunately that is very far from the case. Lasting progress will require structural changes to our homes, our energy supply and the pricing system – like Energy For All, which will guarantee that every home has enough energy, free, to meet its basic needs. Instead, the Chancellor’s handouts will enable some to eat today – and go hungry again tomorrow. Here’s the context:

  1. The starting point. The levels of poverty are now so high in this country that even sums that are high, for a giveaway only take the tip off the iceberg. The UK spends far less on pensions than other OECD countries. Over two million families last year were forced to turn to food banks, up 80% on five years ago, and in many of these homes parents were working two or even three jobs to try to get by. Missing meals and rationing heat to an hour or less a day, many have not dared to put a kettle on, let alone cook a hot meal. With UK homes the worst insulated in Europe many are paying over the odds to heat houses and flats that never really stay warm or even dry. In terms of fuel costs alone, £1200 more than cancels out the expected £800 increase next October, but doesn’t approach negating the £1,500 total with the increase this spring, let alone what could happen next January, with Ofgem’s accelerated increase timetable. We cannot forget that the £1500 is an average – it is more for people on prepayment meters, and much more for people in bad housing, forced to pay to heat the streets. And we can’t forget, either, that BEFORE these increases, even before the pandemic, 10,000 people in the UK died each winter from fuel poverty.  
  2. Aside from the increasing fuel prices, people are facing massive increases in food costs, clothing, housing costs, transportation, and also, by the government’s choice, NI increases and real-terms cuts in benefits. Benefits increased by 3.1% in April, with consumer price inflation at 9%. The Chancellor’s “generous” £650 for people on means tested benefits goes a bit over half way towards making up the £20 per week ripped last October from people on UC – and never even extended to people on legacy benefits. There’s an extra £150 for people on disability benefits that are NOT means tested, but they are also to lose access to the Warm Home Discount, worth £150.  
  3. Meanwhile, working age people who are not on any benefits will get £400, which doesn’t go far against a £1500 increase. Where does that leave people who were working 2 or 3 jobs but were still struggling to make ends meet before the need to find hundreds of pounds more to pay for energy? The Chancellor keeps saying that benefits will rise with inflation in the autumn – and inflation, he says confidently, will then fall (would he count on that if his own family were affected?) It’s true that in this very low waged economy many people in “good” jobs are also recipients of benefits. But that is by no means true of all. For the many one or two income households who earn just over the benefits threshold, there is a cliff edge to climb – they get only £400 and nothing more. Unlike a tax system that is graduated so people benefit from allowances in some proportion to what they need, your fate with the Chancellor’s helicopter money, as with so much else these days, depends on arbitrary cut off points, and luck. 
  4. The monies do nothing about the gross injustices built into the pricing system. Because of the recently hugely increased standing charge on bills, you pay more per unit if you use less energy than if you are wealthy and profligate. No matter how much you cut down you can’t avoid the standing charge, which now carries the burden of covering the costs of failed, poorly regulated, energy suppliers. In addition, people on prepayment meters – often forced to have one installed because they’ve fallen into debt  – pay more than people who can pay by Direct Debit. 
  5. The handouts, however welcome, are a one-off. They may of course be repeated if the government again finds itself under sufficient pressure. But the total insecurity of having to wait in hope of such an event will drive many to despair, with all the implications for mental illness, suicides, demotivation, and sad, hard, unnecessary decisions being made to give up hope of a home, a course, a holiday, a business plan, or even a child because people in this country just can’t count on anything.
  6. The handouts will go not only to people who need them but to people who are already very wealthy and do not by any stretch of the imagination need help with their bills. FPA’s planned “Energy for All” is also universal, but would be balanced by higher tariffs for people who are using far more energy than they need. The Government’s suggestion that individuals can ‘donate to charity’ in no way deals with the injustice of giving public money to people who may already be profiting from the crises that are pushing the rest of us to desperation. 

Meanwhile, how is this all funded, and what of the Windfall Tax? Well, a 25% levy on the extraordinary profits that energy companies are raking in from our bills is due to raise £5 billion of the £15 billion pounds being spent on returning cash to households. (Interesting that they can find the rest from somewhere.)  But at the same time, the Chancellor has promised these same companies that if they “invest in the UK” – and specifically in oil and gas – they will get back over 91p for every pound invested. In their own businesses, that is. Promised up to 2025, at £1.9 billion per year this has been estimated to give them £5.7 billion (no official figures available). The government is taking with one hand, then, and giving back generously, with the other – as a bribe to induce profit-sated multinational corporations to further drill for oil, pollute the air, water, land and sea, and destroy the climate that we all depend on. Rishi Sunak’s tax breaks could lead to more than £8bn worth of North Sea energy projects. 

In any case, a tax worth £5 billion from £13.4 to £13.6 billion of windfall profits, still leaves eight and a half billion pounds in the hands of these corporations. That money – unearned, and created by the extra high prices we have paid – will go to people so obscenely wealthy that they don’t know what to do with it, and to further destruction of planet earth. Yet that money could have made a huge difference to our bills and our health. Just £3 billion could insulate over 2 million homes.

All this on top of the ongoing enforced generosity of the British taxpayer who gives more in subsidies to the likes of BP and Shell than we take from them in taxes. In normal times the UK government taxes oil and gas producers 40% on profits from North Sea extraction. This is the lowest government tax take in the world from an offshore oil and gas regime.  Even with this temporary levy, the tax rate on oil and gas companies in the UK will still be lower than the global average. 

Out of sight of the headlines, then, the champagne corks were no doubt popping in corporate boardrooms where billionaire CEOs weighed up the Chancellor’s statement. In millions of kitchens, meanwhile, their customers splurged by finally turning the kettle on and making a nice cup of tea.

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Fuel Poverty Action is Hiring!

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve secured funding to pursue our campaign for Energy For All!  Below we’re advertising two posts – one full time, one part time.  We very much look forward to expanding our team.

To apply, please send cover letter and CV to [email protected] by 5 pm on 7 July 2022 (extended deadline) with “e4a Application” in the subject line, and get in touch if you have any questions.

Energy for All Campaign Coordinator

Download a PDF of the job description here or read it below:

Energy-for-All-Campaigner-Coordinator

Energy for All Campaigner: Parliamentary Focus

Download a PDF of the job description here or read it below:

Energy-for-All-Campaigner-Parliamentary-focus

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Malus Court Watergate

Graeme Langton and Eddie Farrell, Malus Court residents

Following Pendleton Together’s revelation late Friday afternoon by letter, Malus Court residents will be without water for 30 hrs this coming Wednesday. How will this affect residents?

On Malus Court we have a range of ages and disabilities living on here. Ages range from new-born babies up to residents in their 90’s. Disabilities include mental health conditions, dementia, end of life diagnosis and conditions keeping residents bed bound. For example, the resident who is 90 years the day before the water switch off needs constant care – help with bathing and medications and regular toilet needs throughout the day and night. He needs to be kept warm and eat regular hot meals. His wife in her late 80’s also has medical needs and also needs medical care daily being diabetic. The strain on their health is enormous, not only physical but mentally as well. They struggle to cope heating their flat due to spiralling bills that come with a heating system that is not suitable with the property. There is no insulation on the property. Malus Court is under fire watch since Grenfell. Fire risk recommendations since 2017 have been ignored. And this couple live 7 floors up, fearing if a fire did happen they would die in the building.

Now we have ‘Watergate’, switching water off for 30 hrs. Pendleton Together, our landlords, and Salford Council who own the properties have put these measures in place for the Watergate disruption:

  • They have offered use of ( 1 ) toilet for 84 flats totalling over 100 residents, situated over 100 metres away and only accessed by leaving Malus Court and braving the weather that day/night.
  • They have offered bottled water if we contact them or go fetch it ourselves. ( I am sure the bedbound residents will mange that (not)) .
  • They also refuse to open their offices for residents to have face to face conversations with management, although the rest of the country have returned to work. But let’s be thankful, they have offered to come to the back door and speak outside with residents through resident liaison officers who have no authority and repeat same answer – ‘we don’t know, someone will ring you back’ – which never happens.

So this gentleman and his wife will have no water for 30 hrs. They’ll have no toilet facilities in their home to use as they would not be able flush toilet when they both need access to a toilet all day/night due to their medical needs. They cannot wash and keep clean for 30hrs. But if they walk 100 metres and queue up outside they might be able use the one toilet available if they don’t soil themselves waiting or they die due to the cold or exertions to get there. This is just one example. How do families feed babies and wash them? 

All residents should be put in hotels or alternative accommodation until this Watergate has ended. 

The past years since Grenfell residents have had to endure:

  • Windows leaking, and going into debt because of heating bills for a system that does not warm your home but costs hundreds of pounds per month. 
  • No insulation on building making them very, very cold. 
  • Fire risk recommendations not actioned. 
  • Vermin infestation/ silver fish. 

The list is endless. And now Watergate and still our ward councillors, local mayor and Manchester mayor and MP ignore our plight and refuse to visit or even open dialogue with residents over our concerns. Lives are at risk and the local authorities are failing in their duty of care. And if something tragic happens while we wait for them to help, ‘Lessons must be learnt’ will be the answer.