Fuming Peckham council estate residents are trapped in boiling hot flats and paying huge energy bills despite turning the heating off.
Leaseholders living on the Consort Estate are being lumped with £2,700 gas bills – more than triple national averages – and believe a dodgy heating system could be the cause.
Sweltering families even resorted to filling beds with ice and buying air conditioning units to avoid overheating as London baked in 32-degree heat earlier this month.
Consort is just the latest estate to sound the alarm over sky-high gas bills. Southwark Council has already pledged to investigate the cause of ‘high-levels of consumption’.
Southwark Council is holding a behind-closed-doors meeting today about the issue, which will be attended by Peckham MP Miatta Fanhulleh.
David Bruce, a Consort Estate resident, said: “We need to know if there is heat over usage on our estate or whether it’s do with a problem with the system itself.
“It’s unfair to blame residents for using too much energy while, at the same time, they’re complaining about overheating and keeping their radiators off.”
Flats on the Consort Estate are among the 17,000 homes served by Southwark Council’s district heating network.
District heating networks supply hot water from one central heat source to homes whose residents must use the energy provider chosen by the council.
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However, in recent years, Consort residents have seen their energy bills soar.
A two-bedroom household on the estate now spends an average £2,733 annually on heating and hot water alone even though Ofgem estimates typical household energy consumption should come to £1,568.
Consumption is also high. The average estate flat is consuming 20,532kWh even though OFGEM recommends a 7500kWh average.
But residents are questioning how consumption can be so high when they are careful to turn the heating off.
Emily Miller, a leaseholder, said: “I’m not even using the heating for most of the year because the place is so well insulated.”
She added: “There is so much heat coming from the pipes in the walls that visitors assume I’ve got underfloor heating and a heated toilet seat!”
She said she’d resorted to “an ingenious system of ice all over the bed” and that she and other had paid £400 each for air conditioning units.
She added: “I have had the hottest pregnant summer you can imagine… I’m glad I didn’t have my baby in July or June because you have to be more careful with babies and regulation of their temperature.”
While residents believe the pipes themselves could be wasting energy, Southwark Council appears to believe this is not the case.
Instead, Southwark Council engineers reportedly believe some households are overusing energy.
This may be why leaseholders are seeing such high energy bills. Social tenants do pay for heating and hot water but their overall contributions are capped.
Leaseholders often say that they are then left to foot the bill when other households use excessive amounts of energy.
In the year leading up to March 2023, the council burned four times as much gas as its London authority counterparts, according to data published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Cllr Sarah King, Cabinet Member for Housing, previously said at Council Assembly: “I have raised it with officers… and they are currently committed to investigating what’s going on with the very high levels of consumption you’ve identified.”
Southwark Council was approached for further comment.
