‘This system does not work’: Why vulnerable energy customers face a battle just to get help

theguardian.com:

Helen Lord, who is now head of the Vulnerability Registration Service, was shocked at how rapidly her father’s health deteriorated after he contracted Alzheimer’s.

Brian Lord had been a founder director of CCN Systems, which later became credit checking giant Experian. What happened before his death 18 years ago drives her quest to ensure vulnerable Britons are recognised and helped to access basic utilities. But the work of her not-for-profit service – and her own later efforts to help her mother – are being hampered by problems with the registers that are designed to identify the most vulnerable.

The subject of identifying vulnerable Britons has shot up the agenda over the past year as energy prices have soared. It emerged that debt agents for British Gas had ignored signs of vulnerability to forcibly enter homes and fit prepayment meters, regularly cutting people off from heat and power when they failed to pay their bills. A subsequent ban on force-fitting such meters ended last week, with the regulator, Ofgem, under pressure to show that it has improved the process. The system of mass approval for home entry warrants by magistrates has also been described as a rubber-stamping exercise that fails to properly analyse personal circumstances.

Calls for a “social tariff” to cut the cost of energy for low-income households have grown louder. A significant thread of the debate has been how to identify those in need of help, and campaigners argue there is a key tool that could offer help but is being badly managed: priority services registers (PSRs).

Gas, electricity and water firms are obliged to maintain PSRs as a free support service to ensure extra help is available to those who need it. Those eligible include pensioners,