Fury as ‘secret courts’ hand out warrants for energy firms to break into homes

0:01Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, does a new court process designed to deal with applications for warrants, streamline, scrutinise or sabotage our democracy? The courts are fast. The attention is usually focused on the top end, the serious criminal cases. the jury trials is obviously headline news at the moment but the government's looking at major reforms to the court service in the context of chronic delays and huge backlogs and what they're going to be looking at in 2026 is ways of making things go faster and essentially reduce our justice service down to something that is a lesser form of justice and potentially something that we wouldn't like to see happening.

1:05Some of the things that have been done so far are not appropriate testing our faith in the courts to do what is right and fair. But first, you might remember a few weeks ago that we covered the controversial news that jury trials in the UK are set to be axed. And today, our courts correspondent Tristan Kirk is back with another story exposing our justice system. The chief magistrate is investigating after concerns about the utility warrant system were uncovered by the standard. Magistrates are sitting in secret to allow utility companies to break into people's homes, granting warrants based on applications they have never even seen.

1:50Huge amounts of trust is being placed in debt agencies working for energy firms. and when failures to abide by the law are actually uncovered, they are swiftly brushed aside. Simon Francis, who leads the campaign group End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said It makes us furious that this is still going on. It's not just about people getting behind on their energy bills, it's getting a warrant to break into people's homes. We know there is pressure on the court system, But having your home broken into without a magistrate having looked at the documents, that's not justice. And Tristan joins me now. Tristan, back in late 2023, there was a big scandal about the way that utility warrants were being approved by the magistrate's courts and what was being done.

2:42What was going on there? So the major energy firms, utility companies, when a household bill has gone unpaid or there appears to be some sort of problems with supply to a household or a business, they can go to a court and they can ask for a warrant in order to be able to enter the property. Now, there were some deep concerns raised in 2022, 2023 about the way that magistrates' courts were approving those warrants and then what they were doing with them. And the main focus of the story back then was to do with prepaid meters. Essentially, what was happening was that people who were really struggling with their energy bills, cost of living crisis, and they were in some deep trouble financially, were falling behind with their bills.

3:29They were going unpaid. and then the utility companies were going to the courts getting a warrant and then breaking into their homes and fitting these people with prepaid meters, which is a very expensive way of getting your energy. So essentially, there were vulnerable people who were finding themselves being put into more difficulties as a result of what the energy companies were doing and the way that they were doing it. And what has the standard discovered since then? Well, as a result of the original scandal, the energy companies launched a big review into the way that they were approaching the issue of people who weren't keeping up with their bills, and particularly their use of forcibly commissioning prepaid meters.

4:12And the courts also took another view about what they were doing. So back in 2022, 2023, the courts magistrates were sitting in open court and were essentially getting a big bundle of warrants and then just waving them through. in a matter of minutes, even seconds, not really looking at them properly, just rubber stamping. So a utility company could come to the court and say, I'd like 100 warrants for these homes. And a magistrate would, in essence, just say, yeah, fine, without giving much thought or attention to what was being asked, what was the basis of it and whether vulnerable people were being put into difficulties unfairly and potentially unlawfully.

5:01That was the genesis of this. And so the courts went back and looked at this process and said, well, we need to do things differently. There's been a big scandal, a lot of attention on this area. So they designed a new system, which is meant to mean there was more scrutiny. About a year ago, I decided to essentially to look at this process and to see what was going on and to examine whether this new system now in play was actually doing what was intended. And what I found is firstly, the new system is, if this is possible, even harder to scrutinise than the original process. And the original process was pretty tough for journalists to look at.

5:43It was essentially a paper shuffling exercise by magistrates, but at the very least, they were sitting in open court. Now, they do all of this work in secret, in private hearings that happen on Microsoft Teams calls, and journalistic access to them is, I've found, incredibly hard, if not impossible in most instances. And that's before we start talking about public access, which is pretty much nil. And then you look at the process that they're actually using. So what they designed was for, say, a utility company comes to the court and says, we would like warrants for 100 homes. And they put forward a list of 100 properties that they'd like to break into in order to be able to check on the meter and to examine what exactly is happening with that property.

6:37That's usually after a process where they've written to the property and not heard anything back. The magistrates now will take 10 of that 100 list of applications and then they will ask for some extra details essentially to check that those 10 randomly selected warrants have been done properly. If those 10 pass then they will simply waive the other 90 through and the batch of 100 will be all approved. Now, I managed to get access, and this was difficult, but I did get access to one particular hearing at Uxbridge Magistrates Court, where they selected 10 at random from 131 applications that they were looking at that day.

7:17And they checked those 10 with an agent acting for the utility companies over the phone. And what happened was that eight of those 10 passed. They met all the rules and regulations that have been put in place. There'd been enough warning to the property owners. But two of them failed. And this was what caused me some concern. To be perfectly frank, it didn't seem to cause anybody else concern within the hearing because what they did was they just picked another two at random and those passed. And then they said, right, we've got our 10, then we will approve the whole batch of the remaining 130-ish.

7:54But what occurred to me was that if two of them had failed out of 12, that they looked at, how do we know that there weren't others that were failing? This started me down a process which incredibly took more than a year, actually, to complete, where I said, if a batch of applications have been put before the court, then perhaps I can look at them. And even if the court doesn't think it has time to look at them properly, then maybe I can. And just to see, because I was interested to know whether if two had failed, whether there were 20 more that had failed. And if there were, then that would be clear signs of a process that isn't working correctly because energy companies aren't meeting the rules that have been set for them.

8:41Long story short is it became impossible to actually look at the applications. And the reason that it was impossible to look at them actually shocked me because the magistrates' courts themselves don't receive the full detailed applications from the utility companies for these warrants, which I still find incredibly surprising. So even if a magistrate sitting on these hearings wanted to look at every single one of the applications, they simply can't. And my conclusion of all of this is that not only are magistrates sitting in secret to do all of this, which I think is really troubling in terms of scrutiny, transparency.

9:24But also they are, in essence, approving warrants for utility companies and their agents to break into people's homes without even looking at the applications. Okay, so a vast majority of the applications aren't even being checked or assessed. Should we be worried about this? I think this is something that really should trouble everybody in the process and members of the public is that a utility company can go to a magistrate's court and put forward the idea of breaking into people's homes, potentially fitting these prepaid meters that people are very concerned about. And they don't really have to justify it in the vast majority of the cases.

10:05And they don't even have to put forward the paperwork anymore. I think that's a deep flaw in the system in that if a court wanted to, it should be able to pull up every application and say, are you doing things correctly? But they don't. What actually is put before the court is a list of names, addresses, and the amount of the debt. And that's it. I'm not in a position to say that the utility companies are being unscrupulous. There's no way of knowing. And I think that's a real problem in that there was a scandal a few years ago where things were being done incorrectly and unfairly and people were being targeted and put in very vulnerable positions.

10:46And now we have a system that's been supposedly designed to make things better. But as far as I can see, it's actually worse and we can't tell. Let's go to an ad break. Coming up, how are magistrates being allowed to carry out their powers? We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back. Tristan, can you remind us why utility companies seek warrants to enter homes and businesses in the first place? Well, it's quite proper that utility companies are able to, in some circumstances, force entry into homes and businesses in order to be able to conduct the checks that they need to do. Sometimes people might be doing things that are improper or even illegal with their power and energy supply.

11:38And they might be tapping off a system, or they've done some DIY organization that is potentially dangerous. Sometimes people don't pay their bills, and they don't answer the letters, and there's still energy going to the property, and the companies need to be able to go and investigate. And so it is, I think, most people would agree quite right that in some circumstances, utility companies are able to do this. But it also has to be fully justified. And courts give very specific powers about what the utility companies can do if they are allowed to force entry. They can go and check the supply.

12:15They can go and look at the systems in place. They can't just go into properties and do whatever they like. But there are certain limited things that they're allowed to do. And so that's why we have this system where magistrates are supposed to check that the utility companies are fully justified. They've given good notice to the people who own the property and that notice has not been responded to and therefore this is an uncontested warrant. But as far as I'm concerned, it should not just be nodded through as quickly as possible. There should be these rigorous checks to ensure that the court-ordered powers are being used properly.

12:51And what has the Magistrates Association had to say about all of this? Well, the Magistrates Association is the body that represents the magistrates sitting across England and Wales. And these are, let's be clear, the magistrates of course across the country who are doing this kind of process. And so they represent the people who are doing it every single week, potentially every day, and dealing with probably hundreds of thousands of utility warrants that are applied for every year. They've explained the process that goes on, and they've explained why they think that the process of the taking 10 and checking them and then approving the however many tens and hundreds that go in that batch is an appropriate way of dealing with it because they say that the applications are or do tend to be largely the same and it's a poor use of resource to check every single one.

13:47People could debate that, but they've expressed some deep concerns about our findings about the transparency of the system and some of the concerns that are raised about the way that the system is being applied. Because according to the rules that were drawn up by the chief magistrate, that if warrants are failing the checking process, so in the sample, if some of them aren't meeting the standard, then magistrates should maybe be thinking about rejecting the whole batch. The standard has raised these concerns directly with the chief magistrate, Judge Paul Goldspring, who has said that he will investigate what we have found to see if courts need to be directed differently and if the process as he designed it is working as intended.

14:36Finally, what does this all show about the state of our courts and justice system? This is an area of the court system and the justice system that is easily overlooked. It doesn't now happen in open court. It happens on essentially a private Microsoft Teams call. But it is important because these are the things that when it happens to you, it does matter. And we need to be able to rely on our courts to be able to do things properly. I've reported quite extensively on the single justice procedure, which is low-level criminal offenses. And that's another process that is now being allowed to happen in private, away from the public's eyes, and in a process that's actually rather hard for journalists to look at.

15:24And now we have a second process to do with utility warrants, that if somebody was coming knocking on your door saying we're going to force entry and been approved by the court, you'd want to know, just intrinsically know, that the courts have followed a proper process. And what I found is that it is very, very hard to check that that is the case. How exactly are magistrates being allowed to carry out their powers? Are they sitting at home doing magistrates court work? And is that appropriate? This is speculative, But are they even dialing in to do magistrates court work from abroad? Are they fitting it in around their other tasks, doing it in cafes?

16:14The reason I ask that question is because we've now opened the door for a system where magistrates can do their court work with very limited access to the paperwork. And over a team's call, are they giving enough thought to the exercise of these very important powers? Are they doing it haphazardly and in a way that most people would think is not appropriate? That's why we look at these systems to make sure that powers we don't look at every day. We don't observe utility warrant hearings, single justice procedure courts. We don't look at them every day, but we do need to be able to trust them that they're being done properly.

17:01And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow morning. We'll see you then.