'We're barely scraping by after heating bill rises'

Homeowners in south London “trapped” on an unmetered communal council heating system have said their annual service charge bills have doubled to more than £4,000 per household.

The leaseholders on two Southwark Council-owned estates in Peckham are among 17,000 households across the borough who receive their energy through a district heat network.

This is where a communal boiler supplies heating and hot water to several properties – a system the homeowners claim uses twice as much energy as normal.

Southwark Council insists district heating is cheaper and more efficient than individual boilers in the long-run.

But residents claim poorly insulated pipes transporting energy from the communal boiler to their properties are leaking heat, leaving their homes unbearably warm and pushing up their bills.

Council tenants on district heat networks had their bill increases capped at 10% this year thanks to the local authority’s heating account, which allows small surpluses and deficits to be carried from one year to another to reduce the impact of energy price fluctuations.

Leaseholders, who always have to pay the actual cost of their estate’s heating within a financial year, say they are struggling under huge yearly bill increases and believe it would be cheaper to have an individual boiler.

Emily Miller, 40, who bought a two-bedroom flat on Peckham’s Consort Estate in 2014, said her annual service charge bill had gone up from £1,800 a decade ago to over £4,500 this year, mainly due to a surging heating and hot water charge.

She said: “Being leaseholders, we are totally trapped in. Initially, I took it on the chin but the bills seem to have rocketed in the past few years.

“The flats are so warm as it is, we only have the heating on four times a year. This year I had to buy a stand-alone air conditioning unit. It was £450 and it uses lots of electricity and the electricity isn’t covered by the service charge.”

Jay Brown, 37, who lives in a three-bed home around the corner on the Cossall Estate with her partner, said their yearly service charge was £1,800 when she moved in in 2021. This year, the estimate was almost £5,000.

“We don’t have any control," she said. "In any other house I have lived in, you can turn the heating off. Here you can’t.

"[The council] seem to think that because we are leaseholders we can afford it, but we’re barely scraping by.”

Tom Vosper, who is responsible for district heat networks at Southwark Council, admitted to Consort Estate residents at a meeting in July that the communal boilers were using double the amount of energy than a typical individual boiler, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

He blamed the high energy consumption on the age of boilers on the estate, loss of heat through the network (for example via pipes) and the lack of meters in properties, which he said meant residents did not have an incentive to save energy.

Despite this, Mr Vosper insisted that inefficiencies in the heating system were not the main thing driving leaseholders’ bill rises.

He attributed the increased costs to the fact that the council was paying 450% more for energy than it used to and claimed underground pipework on the estate was already well insulated.

But some leaseholders remain unconvinced with the council’s excuses and want to be removed from the district heat network altogether.

Jody Reynard, 49, who bought his two-bed flat on the Consort Estate in 2008, called the £4,000 service charge “unmanageable” and “completely unsustainable”. He said he wants to be taken off the heat network.

Lou Franklin, 38, who bought his one-bedroom flat on the estate eight years ago, said he felt “helpless” as his service charge had more than doubled from £1,800 to £4,800 in the time he had lived there.

He added: “Why can’t people break away from the system? Why can’t somebody get a boiler in their flat and be responsible for it?”

A Southwark Council spokesperson said: “We know that district heating offers better value for residents long-term and offers opportunities for meeting our net-zero targets for carbon reduction. In terms of maintenance, it’s also easier to achieve economies of scale on repairs.”

They added that fuel costs had “risen exponentially” in recent years but that “costs should come down” and “the heating system offers significant savings over time”.

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