Residents in an 'affordable' housing development in Edinburgh are facing a 450% increase in their gas bills. According to this BBC news article.
They were paying just 4 pence per kilowatt hour, but this is set to rise to over 22 pence per kilowatt hour.
The Harvesters Way development has 180 residential properties all served by a communal district heating system.
The average rate is 7 pence per kilowatt hour, so these residents used to benefit from a social tariff, but this has come to an end and now they are exposed to market rates.
The management company buys the energy in bulk, but this time around, I guess following a lot of fluctuation in energy prices, most energy companies have been unwilling to put in a bid to provide them with energy, and the best rate they could get is three times above the current average.
To put this in perspective, a household which was paying £60 a month for gas is now going to have to find around £300 a month.
For low income households this is simply impossible.
And in this particular estate the gas gets cut off if the residents credit on their pre-payment metres runs out.
Not an isolated case.
According to this Guardian article from over a year ago several social housing estates over the last year have faced increases of up to 350%.
This is mainly because communal heating systems aren't subject to the energy price cap, and the prices paid are also skewed by the fact that management companies buy their energy months in advance and tie their residents into set rates going forwards, meaning they don't always get the best deals, sometimes, they get TERRIBLE deals.
Heat Networks
There are 14 000 Heat Networks in the UK, providing energy to 480K households.
The government sees them as playing a crucial role in meeting climate targets. This does make sense: it's more efficient to have one central heating system working and pumping heat into several houses rather than every single house having separate systems.
However I guess it's because there are relatively few of them that the government treats them with a light touch, meaning management companies can get away with slacking off and not fighting for their residents, preferring instead to settle for bad deals and then just passing these costs on.
And it seems these costs are being passed on to the poorest in British society!
And they are locked in because no one is going to buy a house that's got a hard-wired gas contract costing three times the national average rate!