PROFITEERING energy firms should compensate vulnerable victims of rip-off pre-payment meters which overcharge them and leave them shivering when they cannot pay, campaigners demanded today.

Anger over break-ins and forced installation of the controversial meters has grown as campaigners accused energy companies of fobbing off poor and vulnerable customers.

Almost one million warrants issued by courts have allowed companies to force their way into homes, install the meters and then charge victims £150 for the installation.

Energy firms are believed to have breached watchdog Ofgem’s regulations on protecting vulnerable pre-payment meter customers including the sick, elderly, disabled and families with children.

The meters cut off energy supplies if they are not fed sufficient money — a process which Ofgem calls “self-disconnection” or “self-rationing.”

The government asked energy suppliers to detail what support they give the most desperate customers, how many warrants to break into people’s homes they have applied for and how they will make up for any “wrongdoing.”

Energy companies have now assured the government that they will follow the rules which forbid them to forcefully install pre-payment meters in the homes of vulnerable customers.

But campaigners said the firms have supplied only “half the picture” in an “insulting” response to victims.

Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said energy firms “are trying to pull the wool over our eyes yet again” by failing to give details of compensation they will offer wronged customers.

“This is an insult to the victims of the pre-payment meters scandal,” he said.

“The truth is that they have invested time, money and resources in securing almost a million court warrants against households since 2020. 

“Even if only a fraction of those are enforced this is still too many.

“Every one of those enforcements involves the energy firm breaking into someone’s home to impose on them a pre-payment meter which is more expensive for that household than direct debit. 

“They will also charge the household for the installation.”

The Warm This Winter campaign said that as many as two-thirds of pre-payment meter households will contain elderly people, young children or people with a disability or long-term health condition.

Even Tory Energy Secretary Grant Shapps — whose predecessors privatised the UK’s publicly owned energy industry in 1986 — said he was “angered” that some energy firms “have so freely moved vulnerable customers on to pre-payment meters, without a proper plan to take remedial action where there has been a breach of the rules.”

He said: “All suppliers are now halting forced installations, magistrates are no longer signing off warrant applications and Ofgem are upping their game when it comes to their reviews.”

Citizens Advice said pre-payment customers overpaid by an average £258 this winter. 

Those with a meter forced on them paid an additional £150 for the installation — totalling £408. 

Some pre-payment customers overpaid by £600, and campaigners are demanding that they should be compensated.

Shadow climate secretary Ed Miliband said: “The government has been asleep at the wheel during this crisis and now Grant Shapps wants credit for doing the bare minimum.

“Millions of families have suffered as a result of their inaction, especially their total failure to enforce rules that were meant to protect vulnerable customers.

“We need to see the end of the pre-payment penalty and we need a complete ban on the forced installation of meters until there is a fundamental reform of this rotten, discredited system.

“And on the same day, Jeremy Hunt refuses to budge on his decision to allow energy bills to rise to £3,000 in just seven weeks’ time with no proper windfall tax in place.”

There have been growing calls in the Commons for an inquiry into the pre-payment meter scandal, while a petition has been launched calling for a Senedd investigation.

Bethan Sayed, co-ordinator of Climate Cymru’s Warm this Winter campaign, said: “The practice of energy companies forcing installation of pre-payment meters, en-masse, as they announce record profits during a cost-of-living crisis, into vulnerable households is inhumane.

“People have struggled enough through the winter months. Pre-payment meters do not punish vulnerable people during one season alone. It is constant. That is why we demand action.”