Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of trends in the volume of warrants being issued by magistrates to install prepayment meters.
Under the applicable statutory framework, in order to grant an application to enforce a right of entry, a justice must be satisfied that:
The justice must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that these grounds apply. The legislation, which the Justice of the Peace must apply, does not require the energy supplier to demonstrate they are acting as a last resort in seeking a warrant to install a prepayment meter to avoid disconnecting the customer’s supply.
Since 2019 the volume of warrants issued has been increasing year on year, save for a dip during 2020, peaking at 367,084 in 2022.
Year | Granted | Refused | Total |
2019 | 277,142 | 1,824 | 278,966 |
2020 | 221,494 | 43 | 221,537 |
2021 | 332,277 | 36 | 332,313 |
2022 | 367,084 | 56 | 367,140 |
In the period between July 2021 and December 2022, a total 536,214 warrants were applied for by energy suppliers. Of those, the vast majority (536,139) were granted; while 75 were refused.
These figures represent all warrants of entry, as warrants for the purpose of installing a prepayment meter cannot be isolated from the data.
Data by court centre on the number of warrants granted and refused following an application by an energy supplier can be found in the table attached. Data on a constituency level is not held.
These data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics. The data provided is the most recent available and for that reason might differ slightly from any previously published information.
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