Rented Housing: Utilities
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether her Department plans to (a) issue guidance and (b) strengthen regulations to ensure that landlords provide (i) transparent and (ii) fair billing when reselling utilities to tenants.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook
Measures are already in place to protect tenants from landlords passing on inflated utility bills.
Where tenants pay their landlord for their water, rather than paying a water company directly, they are protected by Ofwat’s guidelines on water resale. This means that a reseller cannot profit from selling water and sewerage to its purchasers beyond a small admin fee of £5 a year for an unmetered bill and £10 a year for a metered one.
Similarly, Ofgem’s Maximum Resale Price Guidance protects tenants from being charged inflated gas and electricity costs by their landlord. It sets a maximum price that can be charged for gas and electricity which has already been bought from an authorised supplier. The current maximum resale price is set at the same price as paid by the person reselling, including any discounts.
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