Thread by @deankirby_

Late last week, I went to a magistrates’ court to see how warrants are being processed which allow energy firms to forcibly enter people’s homes to fit a prepayment meter. What I found shocked me 🧵@theipaper 1/

I watched as the magistrates took just three minutes and 51 seconds to approve 496 warrants after a debt collection agent phoned in their request to the courtroom. No names were read out. There was no discussion with the bench about the individual cases 2/ inews.co.uk/news/inside-co…

Everything relied on the debt collector’s word, given under oath, that none of those people were vulnerable or using medical equipment that relied on electricity. Those people could soon find men entering their home with a warrant to fit a prepayment meter 3/

Why does it matter? Prepayment meters are controversial because, at a time when bills are rocketing, they are a more expensive way to buy energy and can be used to collect debt. They can leave struggling families having to self-disconnect their supply 4/ inews.co.uk/news/scandal-u…

Just imagine what that means. Sitting in darkness, you can’t cook a hot dinner, can’t wash your children’s school uniforms, can’t shower for work, can’t make that overdue rent payment. And some people in the UK are living like that for days at a time 5/

One support worker said to me: 'Having no electricity isn’t like camping out with Bear Grylls. It changes everything. It affects how you live your life.' There are concerns it is affecting children’s education outcomes and causing more people to end up in hospital 6/

As Matthew Cole from the Fuel Bank Foundation says in today’s front page story: 'We can hear the panic in people’s voices when they call for help. They can see the cliff edge approaching' 7/

I started looking into this issue after finding out in a Freedom of Information request that the courts have granted nearly 500,000 of these warrants since July 2021. Year on year, they have increased 18 percent. 8/ inews.co.uk/news/uk-energy…

Individual courts are granting the warrants at an astonishing rate. Portsmouth, for example, is granting 13,200 a month, The bench in Leeds granted 6,000 in October, while Birmingham and Croydon magistrates each grant more than 3,000 a month 9/

As I now know from visiting court, after weeks of trying to find one of these hearings, warrants are being processed in batches, hundreds at a time, with little apparent oversight from magistrates about the background to the cases 10/

I’m still investigating this issue and am keen to speak to people in the know about how the warrant process operates, or who have been forced to have a prepayment meter. If you want to speak to me in confidence, my DMs are open - or drop me a line at [e-mail] 11/