Cornton resident left scared to heat home after ten month wait for gas meter

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Cornton dad left without a working gas meter for 10 months says he has been left scared to put his heating on.Kris McKechnie’s meter at his property went blank in April last year and despite an intervention from Stirling MP Alyn Smith last year and promises from operator OVO to address the issue, it still remains without a fix.Mr McKechnie says the company have since arranged to visit his property four times to install a new meter, but have cancelled each of these on short notice - with the dad-of-one forced to take costly time off his work to stay in for engineers.He now admits he’s at the end of his tether over the fault - and claims estimated readings taken since the meter stopped working are adding to the financial strain on his family.He told the Observer: “I wasn’t really using a lot of gas over the summer - only really for dishes and taking showers - so it wasn’t really an issue but as we were getting into autumn, they were estimating bills well above what they should be.“I went to Alyn Smith and the Ombudsman and they got the ball rolling on this.

I got appointments to change over the meter; the first of these was in October but it got cancelled on the day, as did the next one in December.“There was another appointment set for January which was cancelled and then finally the most recent one last week.“Each time, I’ve had to take time off my work and I’ve now used up all of my annual leave so I’m having to take unpaid leave to sit in my house because I can’t risk not being here and it costing me £100.“I know that the estimates done will be overestimated because everyone is watching what they are using now and if it goes on previous usage, then I don’t think that is very fair given we are all using gas