British Gas has regained permission to force-fit prepayment meters in the homes of customers who cannot pay their energy bills. The industry regulator Ofgem lifted a block that had been in place for nearly four years, imposed after debt agents working for the supplier were found to have ignored signs of severe vulnerability — mental health crises, physical disabilities — while installing meters in people's homes during the peak of the Russian gas crisis. The company paid a record settlement worth more than £100m. Now it is back. The timing is pointed. Household energy bills this winter are forecast to be among the highest since 2023, the year the scandal first broke. Energy debt across UK households is projected to exceed £7bn, a figure British Gas itself cites as justification for resuming forced fittings. That debt load translates to roughly £80 added to the average household bill — costs socialised across all customers when debts go unpaid, creating a financial logic that the supplier wields to frame forced metering as a collective benefit. Ofgem's position is that force-fitting should remain a "last resort" with "rigorous checks." Suppliers must make at least 10 contact attempts and conduct a welfare visit before installation. Meters cannot be fitted in homes with people over 75, children under two, or those with severe health conditions or medical equipment. These are the guardrails that were supposed to exist before the scandal. The question is enforcement, not rules. Fuel poverty campaigners are not reassured. Simon Francis of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition notes that magistrates continue to approve bulk batches of warrant applications for forced installations — the same assembly-line process that enabled the original abuses. "Some of the system failures identified in the original investigations are still happening," he said. The regulatory architecture looks upgraded on paper; whether it functions differently in practice is untested. British Gas frames its approach as balanced: early engagement, targeted support, flexible repayment options, with involuntary meters as a backstop. The company distinguishes between customers who "genuinely cannot afford to pay" and those who "do not engage." That distinction is load-bearing — and it is made by the supplier, not an independent party. The incentive to classify non-payers as disengaged rather than vulnerable is structural and permanent. The government has distanced itself, calling this "a regulatory decision by Ofgem" while warning against a repeat of "rogue practices." This is the familiar posture of delegated accountability: the state funds billions in energy support, the regulator sets rules, the supplier enforces collection, and no single actor owns the outcome when things go wrong. The £112m settlement was paid, lessons were supposedly learned, and the machinery restarts. What has actually changed is the size of the settlement cheque, not the underlying dynamic. A utility with a regional monopoly on gas supply is empowered to enter people's homes and alter their access to energy based on debt disputes, with regulatory oversight that already failed once at scale. The 20-year trajectory of this pattern is a normalisation of coercive debt collection dressed in procedural safeguards — safeguards whose adequacy is tested only after harm occurs.
