You may need to comply with the Heat Network (Metering and Billing) Regulations 2014 if you are a commercial or domestic property landlord and you provide heating, cooling or hot water to multiple buildings via a district heating network or to tenants in a multi-let property via a communal heating network.
Suppliers of heat have the following duties:
- Notifying the Secretary of State or in the case of a Scottish network the Scottish Ministers.
- Installation of meters for heating, cooling or hot water supplied from a district heat network to a building occupied by more than one final customer.
- Installation of heat cost allocators, thermostatic radiator valves, and hot water meters.
- Replacement of existing meters, new buildings, and major renovations.
- Ongoing obligations in relation to meters and heat cost allocators – ensure continuous operating and proper maintenance including periodically checking for errors.
- Billing must be accurate, based on actual consumption and compliant with regulation requirements where meters or heat cost allocators are installed.
The regulations are enforced by the Secretary of State or Scottish Ministers in the case of Scottish networks.
Notification to the Secretary of State/equivalent needed to have been done by 31st December 2015. If this hasn’t been done, then it needs to be carried out ASAP. We can help to determine whether a company needs to comply and make the notification on their behalf.
It is an offense for any heat supplier to fail to comply with their duties. Any person found guilty of an offense is liable on summary conviction to a fine.
If you are unsure what your obligations are please contact us as soon as possible to assess what action needs to be taken. You will need to install metering or heat cost allocators to measure heat delivered to each final customer or have undertaken a cost effectiveness/technical feasibility assessment to determine that it is not practical to install this by the 31st December 2016.
If you need to install any meters or heat cost allocators we can help source these and arrange the regular billing of customers.
For full details of the regulations, read or download the PDF here.
