Landlords face paying tenants’ unpaid energy bills

Reply to the comment left by Boris at 30/10/2026 – 12:30
The reason I stopped taking benefits tenants was because if the tenant turns out to be not eligible for benefits the housing benefits people could come after me as the landlord for the housing benefit paid. I had no problem with my tenants who were benefits tenants, the government just made them too high risk to house. This proposed change to protect utility companies (if it goes ahead), like Labour’s Renters Rights Act makes the high-risk tenants even higher risk than they were before. The only thing landlords can do is collect, store and process more tenant personal data and landlords may have an obligation to pass the data on to other creditors.

The bottom line is that landlords and their agents need to do more to protect themselves because if they don’t they will end up being the victims as the government considers them to be fair-game, as John Healey demonstrated this week. Landlords need to undertake more stringent credit-referencing checks, screen out the high-risk tenants, be sure that landlords have enough data to be able to pursue a claim via Money Claims Online for those tenants that they do take, and be prepared to pass the relevant details on to other creditors.

Reply to the comment left by Boris at 30/10/2026 – 12:27

It’s not simple quick job in tenant changeover dealing with some of these utility companies.
I’d take £1000 less on a house if I didn’t have to register the gas & electric. On that subject people, E have no standing charges so good for empty houses.

We get in house, can’t read meter we not used to like the olden days.
Take 10 photos of all the screens, send em gas elec company.
They try billing u for period it wasn’t yours cause tenant done a bunk.

Scaling up we’ve tried with sxxt staff, & not some’at u want to do when u packing up & don’t want the house anyway.

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 30/10/2026 – 13:06
I use an agent and the agent or the agent’s inventory clerk reads the meters as part of the standard inventory report. An inventory clerk should be reading the meters and documenting it.

Going forward, the difference if Ofgem get their way is that the energy companies will need sufficient details to be able to pursue the tenant for an unpaid debt and that means more than just a name and the address of your rental property. When the energy company pursues the tenant for the debt (probably via a debt collector or Money Claims Online) the landlord needs to have got in there with a claim first to recover the outstanding rent if it hasn’t been paid. So if landlords are using agents they need to know not only will the agent be collecting all the details including NI number and photo id, they also need to know how quickly the agent will be passing these details onto the landlord or to the landlord’s debt collector, or whether they can put the claim in to Money Claims Online for the landlord.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 30/10/2026 – 13:21

Yes I only have about 15 houses with Letting Agents & they do/did the meters on the houses I was keeping at the time. Easy.

Not so easy when I’ve still got loads of houses left with non letting agents who have less morals & do bunks.

Good thinking on the future changing of debt collection.

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 30/10/2026 – 13:28
We don’t have any choice but to think about the future because the government has left us no choices.

My understanding of the Money Claims Online service is that you need to have the tenants’ National Insurance Number in order to be able to get an attachment of earnings order. Guessing that you’d also need photo id (passport/driving licence) because in my experience tenants don’t always give their real name. As in 2026 it’s quite easy for anybody to falsify documentation using AI I suspect that going forward we are going to need copies of passports and driving licences that have been certified by a solicitor, and there is an additional cost to this which needs to be passed on.

Reply to the comment left by Boris at 30/10/2026 – 10:12
James I have experienced more than once that tenants have changed the supplier since moving in and not left proof of who they’ve changed to by the time they have moved out

Reply to the comment left by juliet bonnet at 30/10/2026 – 14:47
I have had the same experience. And mostly over the decades I have found that tenants have moved on without leaving forwarding addresses. Sometimes they’ve moved on using different names. Years ago I have had the experience of one (working age) benefits tenant who appeared to be using multiple names to obtain credit from a number of different suppliers of a variety of services, whilst using a different name to claim benefits.

Since the introduction of labour’s RRA and looking at the direction of travel, going forward it is going to be too high risk to house tenants without retaining National Insurance number and several forms of photo ID (unless it’s for asylum seekers via a company like Meers, Serco or Clearspring, ie. being underwritten by the Home Office). As a landlord you have to complete right-to-rent checks and affordability checks anyway, now you just need to retain more details and also be more careful to screen out the high-risk tenants who have no reliable guarantor (not that I think many people would want to be a guarantor any more since the introduction of the Act this year).

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 13:06
This policy is crazy and like many others not thought through. A bill in a person’s name does not make another person liable for it. Not my problem if a non paying tenant leaves after the bailiff comes (of course I have no forwarding address and they may even be temporarily housed by the Council) – the only issue is mounting mail for them for unpaid bills of all kinds. Even ‘good’ tenants have refused to give a forwarding address as they mistrust landlords so much.
A ‘permanent’ address is required on the MyDeposits documents so I have forwarded stacks of mail and unpaid bills to this address, often a parent or relative. Let them know what their kids have been up to!

I’m so much more careful with choosing tenants now. On my last let, I turned down 3 applicants all because their credit scores were too low, 2 of them with CCJs. In the past I may have taken a chance – but not now. I seem to be spending a lot on credit checks!

Once again the changes hit the most in-need/poorest. Hardly their fault but what can we do?

If this comes in I’ll add a clause to my TA’s that unless the tenant provides a forwarding address I won’t release their deposit. Then they will raise a dispute and I’ll respond by saying since I am on the hook I am entitled to the information to pass on to the utility company. Is the adjudicator going to rule against me? Why would a former tenant refuse to supply a forwarding address if it wasn’t to try to avoid paying their bill?