Unregulated gas charges?

Hi, I’ll try and be as clear as I can with this, it is not a system that everyone is aware of – new builds now come with a heating/energy system that produces heat and hot water to flats, this is billed separately to anything else and the leaseholder is directly responsible, usually you can get the tenant on the bill.

I’ve found major flaws in this system as an RTM director and now as a landlord with no real access to management have found that the management has changed the unit charge for the gas (for my rental, so my tenant) and they are being billed at an exceptionally high rate.

I took it up with the management who have said that this is because they were being billed too low for the last couple of years – it was relatively low but I had assumed that this was because they had ‘bought’ the gas at the right time.

It seems there is an error in the billing and they are looking to back bill for up to 6 months and it will be considerable at the rate they are suggesting from old 7p to new 37p per unit (Gas for one of my blocks is now 45p). I have asked for an explanation of why they are charging so much when the unit rate is now low and whether was it a ‘mistake’ that they underbilled in the past.

Another leaseholder has told me that as the freeholder is supplying the gas to the building they are not regulated and can charge whatever they wish. Doesn’t sound correct but who knows?

So my first question is can they back bill and secondly can they charge what they like?

The difficulty for me is that my tenant is unlikely to want to pay back energy, if the bill comes to them, I certainly don’t want to (lease says I’m ultimately responsible) and secondly I sold one in the development 5 months ago – so who is responsible there.

I always manage to ask the unanswerable but maybe someone has been through this complicated system.

Thanks,

Harlequin