Petition calls for Electricity Authority to protect vulnerable customers

Debbie Leyland could only afford to turn her heater on for one hour a day while recovering from radiation and chemotherapy at home. Photo / Melissa Nightingale

As cancer patient Debbie Leyland sat tucked up by her heater on a chilly winter’s day, a timer went off. Her hour of heating was up, and it was time to go back to bed for the day.

Feeling like a prisoner heading back to her cell after her allotted time in the yard, the now-58-year-old Wellingtonian retreated to her bedroom so she would not use too much electricity and risk having her power shut off again.

Leyland, who was trying to recover from radiation and chemotherapy for her voicebox cancer, had carefully calculated that she could use her heater for one hour each day while still being able to afford her bill, meaning the rest of her day she had to spend her recovery time lying in bed to stay warm. She set timers for herself to make sure she didn’t go over her heating limit.

Having had her power shut off a few winters prior, the Lyall Bay resident wasn’t keen for it to happen again.

“I’ve had days where I’ve had to decide do I eat today or do I have to pay for power? Why do I have to live like this?” She asked.

“Power companies need to stop extorting money from poor people and elderly people so we can be moving to the ends of our lives with a bit of dignity and be warm.”

Leyland made the comments at the launch of a petition calling for the Electricity Authority to make urgent changes to help people struggling with high power prices.

The changes include banning power companies from charging disconnection fees to people who have had their power shut off.

Leyland said this had happened to her when she could not scrape together enough money to pay for electricity. Despite already struggling financially, she was then charged a bill of about $50-60 for the disconnection. These bills range depending on the power company, but can sometimes be over $200.

Once she managed to pull together enough money to pay the fee and pay for power, she was faced with a $140 reconnection fee as well, which she managed to avoid by joining a different power company.

Debbie Leyland gave hot water bottles to neighbours as nobody in her neighbourhood can afford proper heating. Photo / Stock

Several months later, her power was cut off again.

“[Power companies] are getting millions and millions of dollars and we are sitting here freezing,” she said.

At one point, Leyland had her grandson come visit but had to send him home because her house was too cold for a child.

The high power prices cut in other ways too. Leyland, who suffers at times from severe anxiety attacks, learned that hot showers helped her cope with them. Hot showers, unfortunately, were not in the budget.

She described giving hot water bottles to other people on her street because nobody in her neighbourhood could afford to use heaters.

Leyland hoped somebody would take notice of the petition and do something to make a difference, “because people are dying early because they’re not heating their homes”.

Power companies “are getting rich off my poverty situation and I’m getting sick of it”.

Having to resort to staying in bed and using the heater for one hour per day when she had cancer took a hit on her mental health.

“I’m not the type of person that just lies around. I found it incredibly difficult,” she said.

A petition launched this week calls for the Electricity Authority to make urgent changes to help people struggling with high power prices. Photo / Stock

Petition organiser Kate Day, who is also an advocate with Common Grace Aotearoa, said Leyland was one of many suffering from energy poverty.

“I spoke to a mother this week in Porirua who regularly runs out of electricity one or two days before payday and can’t afford to top up,” Day said.

The woman was on prepay power, a system for people who have struggled so much to pay their power bills that they are instead made to prepay for power if they want to use any.

“She then has no heating for her house of eight. These disconnections are so common she has a camp stove for those days, so she can still cook noodles for her kids.”

Prepay power is also an area the petition wants tackled, with research from Consumer NZ showing in June that prepay costs were on average 13 per cent higher than regular power plans once discounts were considered.

“This family shouldn’t have to pay higher costs per unit of electricity than people who can afford to pay monthly.”

The petition calls for the Electricity Authority to ensure prepay costs are no higher than the retailer’s cheapest pay-monthly plans. It also asks for retailers to publish data on prepay disconnections and for the Authority to make the full set of Consumer Care Guidelines enforceable.

Day said these changes were “low-hanging fruit” which the Authority had the power to make, and would improve the lives of thousands of people.

An Authority spokesman said they were conscious of the need to balance making quick changes with avoiding “unintended consequences” for consumers that could potentially make them worse off.

They were currently reviewing the voluntary Consumer Care Guidelines, which came into effect in 2021, but had recently become concerned as to whether the intended outcomes of the guidelines were being achieved.

An assessment found retailers’ alignment with the guidelines was “too variable” and they had not been as uniformly implemented as expected.

The Authority has offered to meet with the petition organisers, and welcomed their input into the review of the guidelines.

In September they will be consulting on options, which may include making the guidelines mandatory.

“The Electricity Authority is also currently considering improvements to how we monitor the retail market.”

Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.