Smart meter mandate risks anti-vaxxer style backlash, British Gas boss warns

Forcing people on to smart energy meters risks creating an anti-vaxxer style backlash, a senior British Gas figure has warned.

Speaking at Utility Week’s Customer Summit, British Gas head of transformation Baljit Dhillon said that a blanket mandate on smart meters risks taking the sector into “a really scary place”.

Dhillon said while he supports annual targets to encourage the uptake of smart meters, forcing people to adopt the technology is not the way to go.

Dhillon said: “What we need to be careful of is turning this into an anti-vaxxer type of thing, where people get entrenched in their thinking and no matter what you say or do they will refuse to let people into their house and install one.

“We need to be really careful that we don’t get to that point because that will be really difficult to overcome as an industry and will do a lot of reputational damage.

“That is the extreme if you did a hard push and said everyone has got to have one. […] That’s a really scary place to end up and that’s not where we want to go.”

He added: “Until people think they are missing out on something, you will always have those people who don’t engage. […]

“Instead, we’ve got to really demonstrate what the benefits are and show those people what they are missing out on by not having one.”

According to the latest government figures, published earlier this month, almost 35 million smart and advanced meters have been installed in homes and small businesses across Great Britain, which represents 61% of all meters in the UK.

However, 2023 saw a 6% year-on-year drop in installations and the government’s latest figures also reveal that the number of faulty smart meters has risen to just under 4 million.

Utility Week’s analysis of government figures carried out last year revealed that the rate of smart meter installations must more than double to have any chance of completing the rollout by the 2025 deadline.

As such calls for a smart meter mandate have been growing in recent years, as suppliers struggle to hit their installation targets.

In November six suppliers agreed to pay out almost £11 million after failing to hit their 2022 smart meter installation targets by more than one million devices.

British Gas owner Centrica has previously supported the idea of mandatory smart meters.

Within Energy UK’s Empowering people report – published in September 2023 –  Centrica group general counsel and company secretary Raj Roy said that completion of the smart meter rollout requires a “move from voluntary adoption towards a mandatory rollout backed by broader incentives and obligations, as well as a public awareness campaign to overcome the real-world obstacles facing the smart meter rollout”.

He added: “The overall policy framework and rollout model must be revised to deliver near universal penetration of smart meters as soon as possible.”

Utility Warehouse chief executive Stuart Burnett also previously told Utility Week that a mandate is needed on smart meters for the UK to achieve its net zero goals.

Also speaking at Customer Summit, Citizens Advice senior policy researcher Rachel Mills added that there are still large parts of society to target before considering a mandate.

She added: “There’s still a lot of people left who are not necessarily against having a smart meter but they are facing barriers to getting one.

“If you look at the private rented sector that’s a huge tranche of customers and it is not that they don’t want one or they aren’t interested in this, it’s that they do face fund barriers: it’s not their home, not their property and so on.

“So we need to learn more about those groups and go for them first. It’s a much easier tranche of people to target than the ‘don’t want’ group which I think is going to be really difficult to convert.”