Grieving Relatives Ordeal with 1p Heating Bill

A family of a dead man has been chased by British Gas over an unpaid heating bill of just 1p. The former mill worker, Leonard Howe, died in December 2006, and the gas heating bill was sent to his relatives. Mr Howe’s daughter said “it was upsetting enough to just see his name on the heating bill, but when I opened it I couldn’t believe my eyes. It must have cost them a lot more than 1p to send the heating bill”. She added that she had been responsible and following her father’s death sorted out his financial situation. She took a gas meter reading and promptly paid the heating bills. She commented “something has gone very badly wrong somewhere”.

The request to pay the boiler and gas heating bills was particularly painful as it came near the anniversary of Mr. Howe’s death.
The spokesman for British Gas commented on the 1p heating bill saying that is was automatically generated when the new owners of Mr Howe’s property were registered. The spokesman has added that “we have realised this should not have happened and have written to Ms Howe to acknowledge our error and to pass our sincere apologies”.

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This page has been written with contributions from plumbing and heating engineers from Surrey and Gas Safe engineers from Sevenoaks. Several of the company's plumbers from Buckinghamshire have worked on similar issues as well as some of our experienced heating engineers from Milton Keynes and our Greenwich qualified plumbers.

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