Power bill ‘not written off’

Press, 14 March 1984, Page 5

Power bill ‘not written off’

An electricity bill owing after the tenants of a Christchurch flat left without paying had not been written off, said the general manager of the Municipal Electricity Department, Mr C. S. Laurie, yesterday. The Tenants’ Protection Association was reported to have said that the bill had been written off after a neighbouring tenant who shared the same electricity meter had twice had her electricity cut off for failing to pay the bill. The association said the incident highlighted the

need for separate meters for houses divided into flats. The woman had paid $l3O of a $3lO bill and eventually the rest had been written off by the M.E.D., the association said. Mr Laurie said the M.E.D. was still trying to recover the outstanding amount from the owner of the house at the time of the incident. (It has since been resold.) The case was the first of its type the department had dealt with. Although he thought it was an isolated case, Mr Laurie said, the issue of separate electricity

meters in flats would be presented to the Christchurch City Council’s airport and electricity committee for its consideration. No statutory electrical legislation existed by which the department could insist on the provision of separate metering for individual tenants, he said. In many cases when a house was divided into flats, common lighting and plug circuits remained and sometimes the hot-water supply was also from one common cylinder. Separate metering was not possible under such

circumstances. “Assuming that the flats qualify for separate metering (that is, that they are fully self-contained) the landlord is faced with the expense of providing a central supply switchboard and of running sub-mains to each individual metering position,” he said. When a property was divided into flats the building was not normally divided into individual fireresistant units. Only one point of supply was permitted in such cases, Mr Laurie said.