Desperate residents ‘forced out’ of Bristol care complex over £76-a-week energy bills

Residents at a sheltered housing complex in Bristol say they are being forced to move out of their homes after a huge hike in electricity bills fixed by the charity that runs them.

Bristol charity Brunelcare provides sheltered housing to 1,400 people and runs seven care homes in Bristol and Somerset.

In August 2022, Brunelcare signed a new energy contract worth £7.7m and from last October it was paying more than five times what it used to pay for energy, which was about £1.5m a year before.

Three of Brunelcare’s ‘Sheltered Independent Living’ sites are in Stockwood and people living in Maple Close are already having to move out because they can’t afford to pay the increased bills.

Brunelcare has to pay the energy provider a commercial tariff, rather than a domestic tariff, and provision of energy at these sites is on a communal basis. Residents are not metered individually which means they pay the same regardless of how little or how much energy they use, whether it’s summer or winter.

Maple Close resident David Wainwright, 73, and his wife, Kim, has lived in his one-bedroom first-floor flat for the past nine years, having previously lived in a Bristol City Council flat.

The retired builder says his electric bill has gone up from £26 a week to £76 a week - a jump of 192% - and he knows of neighbours either moving out or considering handing back their keys.

He says as the flats don’t have individual electric meters, residents have ‘no choice’ when it comes to the energy and nobody knows how much people are using.

“We could sit here in the dark not using any electricity but we would still be paying the same amount of money as somebody having a party with everything switched on,” says Mr Wainwright.

“We have just one night storage heater, a TV, fridge freezer and cooker. We don’t have a washing machine because we have a communal one and we pay that through our service charges. And we don’t even know what the service charge is because our electric is shown as a service charge and it all comes out at the same time.

“People can’t believe what we’re paying as we’re paying more than some people with three-bedroom houses with gas and electric.”

Despite contacting Brunelcare several times and even hand-delivering letters of complaint to the charity at their head office in Whitehall, Mr Wainwright says he has had no communication about the issue.

“It’s either pay or get out, this is what they’re telling people. They tell people to look for cheaper accommodation or sell their car and they even told me to cancel my life insurance to save some money.

“Our neighbour has been here six years and she’s having to move out in two weeks because she can’t afford the bills. She’s 62 and still works but she had to cash in two pensions to make ends meet and now she’s having to move in with her daughter.

“Another neighbour was working double shifts to pay the bills but she’s had to give up and go and live with her sister after living here for four years. These aren’t just our neighbours, they are our friends and it makes me very sad and angry that Brunelcare aren’t helping residents more.

“They’re supposed to be Brunelcare but I call them Brunel ‘don’t care’. It doesn’t matter what you tell them or when you tell them, there’s never a reply and when they do reply they deny things.”

Mr Wainwright says he and his wife ‘love’ living in Maple Close but it’s getting to the point where they don’t know what the future holds for them.

“We’re tied into this electric deal and we have no choice and no say whatsoever. We’ve asked to have our own meters installed and they said no because it’s too expensive.

“I’ve spent thousands on new carpets and decorating and I was going to get a new carpet this year but my wife retires in September so I’ve put the buying of the new carpet on hold because we don’t know if we can even afford to stay here. But then where do we go? My son lives in Liverpool in a one-bedroom place - we don’t have a plan B.

“Just because I’m in my 70s, I’m not going to sit here with a zimmer frame and dribble because that’s what a lot people think we are. I would like Brunelcare to be held accountable because they’re ruining peoples’ lives and they don’t care.”

Jonathan Hucker, Bristol City councillor for Stockwood ward said: “The annual cost of energy over the three sites in Stockwood is about £500k. I think there are around 150 flats in the three sites, which would amount to about £3.3k per flat on average. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but locking in until September 2024 appears to have been a big mistake and residents are paying the price.”

Oona Goldsworthy, chief executive of Brunelcare said: “What the residents have noticed is the longer term impact on them compared to this time last year.

“The government did step in and give people the £400 energy discount and all of that has been passed on to the residents so their bills are pretty much identical to anybody on a domestic tariff. At the time we signed the contract with the provider, our energy bills were going up £100,000 a week and there was no government support on the table.

“Thankfully they did step in so people aren’t paying any more than anybody else but it’s still more than they were paying a year before.

“I would love residents to have their own meters but unfortunately the houses were designed without meters so to put individual meters in would be very expensive for us as a charity and that cost would have to added to service charges so it’s an impossible situation. What I would like is the energy providers, who are making vast profits, to put individual meters into sheltered housing across the UK.

“We still have to wait for latest government discount but when we do, we have a legal obligation to pass it on to residents so I really hope that happens. If residents are struggling, I urge them to please talk to us. We haven’t evicted anybody because of non-payment and that’s something we take very seriously.

“There are things we can do to help and ease some of the problems and people are talking to us. We are a charity and it’s really not in our interests to make people homeless.”