UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi everyone.

We live in a property which has been converted into 3 flats.

First floor is a family of four. Second floor, us, is a couple. There's two landlords. One owns the ground floor flat and the other landlord owns the first floor flat and ours. As stated in a different thread, we pay our rent in cash. I moved in a few months ago. My partner, from America, lived here first and I moved in later.

When I moved in, my partner told me we have a pre-paid meter and that the gas is shared between us and the apartment downstairs. I was like WHAT?! Never heard of this before. Surely if two apartments have separate council tax bills, then a gas meter shouldn't be shared? I asked a couple of questions about it. My partner said the landlord briefly mentioned this on move in day and how they are in the process of splitting the gas so each apartment can have their own supply/meter. My partner moved in February 2018.

I asked the landlord myself and he either wouldn't respond, made excuses or wasn't helpful. I found that my partner had been topping up the meter and paying off someone else's debt, a previous tenant. Whenever my partner topped up, £4.50 was taken. Naturally, when I discovered this information, I contacted the gas supplier and they had no record of this. So I explained the situation with SGN (Southern Gas Networks). An engineer came round to the property to check the supply and meter. He had no choice but to remove the meter from the property as it did not look legit and there was a safety concern when two apartments share a meter. The engineer explained to the landlord the meter can be returned if they can provide evidence it's legit.

The landlord blamed us for this situation, shouting at my partner down the phone and saying we did something illegal. We told the landlord SGN were coming round to inspect the meters outside of the property five days before the appointment. The landlord told us to buy a meter and they will split the gas with their builders. SGN have explained that professionals like them need to install a new connection and meters are supplied by a gas supplier for us to have our own gas. I've informed the landlord this and asked him to contact them directly if he had any questions. SGN also explained that the landlord needs to fill in a form and pay up to £1200 for this job. Unfortunately, the landlord has ignored most of our phone calls and text messages. He responded back eventually, saying we were supposed to get a new meter. I literally don't know what to do.... I know what needs to be done but the landlord is not recognising this and being very difficult.

As the meter was ripped out, we didn't have any gas for a week. The apartment downstairs, who we shared gas with, contacted British Gas to open an account with the 'spare' meter outside. I don't blame them, we need gas after all. We're just in the same situation as before, just using a different gas meter. It's frustrating. I've wasted a lot of time, energy and money in this situation. I've requested refunds from the debts we've paid that weren't ours from the relevant gas companies. In turned out, both meters had debts from previous tenants! Luckily, the debt has now been removed from the current meter.

From the information I've shared with you, what are your immediate thoughts? What can we do in this situation? I feel that we have exhausted all options and I've tried everything I could.

Please advise.