Considering disconnecting your mains gas? Don't pay the disconnection fee...!

Home Retrofit
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As part of our retrofit we’re trying to decide whether to move our 5yr boiler or replace with ASHP. Finances will probably be the deciding factor here but along the way I asked Cadent (who manage the NW gas network) for a quote for disconnection. I was told this would be £1600 or more, just to turn the tap off…!

Fortunately the surveyor who called me was a helpful soul and said that I could also call my gas company, say I’m doing renovation works and ask for the meter to be removed and the pipe to be capped. They’ll do this free of charge. If your pipe remains capped, Cadent will start sending you letters threatening to disconnect you. If, after 6 months, they’ve had no response from you, they’ll come out and disconnect the gas supply in the road without charge.

The only downside is you have to pay standing charge for the 6 months even though you’re not using any gas, this should be about £20 for the 6 months. Not a bad trade-off if you’re willing to wait.

Happy retrofitting :slight_smile:

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That’s great info thanks! Looking to do this soon ourselves, so we need to see what the prices are in the northeast

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My utility company is Octopus Energy and it was a simple process to contact them and arrange for the mains gas to be Capped and the meter removed. It was done for free. Because there was a delay in getting an appointment between having my gas boiler removed and the sub-contractor coming out to do the work they even paid be back the number of additional days that they charged for the standing charge.

The key thing is to go directly to your utility company not the DNO.

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Slight worry with this method is it may impact on your credit rating?

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It is the responsibility of the supplier to bill for infrastructure usage (mainly as part of the standing charge). There is no reason for the DNO to get directly involved in your gas bill.

I am also with Octopus and know of several people on their forum that have had their meter removed and the supply capped. At that point Octopus stop billing and that is the end of it. If other suppliers don’t have a coordinated approach they might continue billing and of course if you don’t pay you would eventually be disconnected and get a bad credit rating. Presumably the bills would be estimated so keep your last meter reading the correct their reading each time you are billed.

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I was reviewing old threads (yes, I do have plenty of spare time) and found this one. I decided to reactivate it to add my own experiences.

Last summer (2023) I had a heat pump fitted under the government’s BUS scheme. That resulted in my last gas burning appliance being removed and the fitters capped my gas inlet at the meter.

At this point I could not use gas but still had a meter attached to the gas mains, for which I had to pay standing charge. Checking my supplier’s web page I saw that I was still on the tariff with the lowest standing charge, so that was good for now.

Same day I wrote an email to Octopus, my supplier, to advise them that I was no longer a gas user. I hadn’t used gas since March, which helped them believe me. I requested that they remove my meter and cancel my gas account. It turned out that my contact was not aware of the correct Octopus procedure and she told me that I first needed to get Cadent to disconnect the supply. That may have been the procedure at some of the companies Octopus had taken over. There followed a long and drawn out email correspondence where I named Octopus employees that had previously said it could be done. After a particularly long wait for a reply in late summer I got a reply from a different employee. Yes, they would do it and I would be contacted to arrange a date. :smile:

Eventually my meter was removed and the supply capped. That was in November.

I photographed the empty meter box and the meter lying on the ground, showing the latest reading (the same as the last few months).

Same day I wrote to Octopus asking for my gas account to be cancelled, attaching photographic proof and the job number of the removal. Next day I was told I would no longer be billed for gas. And so it was, although it took a few prompts to remove gas from my login Dashboard and estimated annual consumption I was never billed for gas again.

Total charges for removing the meter and capping the supply? Nothing, zero, nil.

As a little follow up, the person that removed the meter left my gas pipes in place. After he had gone I moved the Earth bonding to the point at which the pipe emerged from the house wall and then removed the remaining pipework and the meter box. Finally a wine cork was forced into the end of the pipe so stop air leakage via that route and I moved a plant pot in front of the pipe.

When I am doing internal work I will pull out the pipe and properly fill the hole in each leaf of the wall (the meter was attached to a cavity walled extension).

The whole meter removal story took just under 5 months.

I do enjoy a story with a happy ending, particularly when it is fact rather than fiction.

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Interesting, I wonder if, in a year, you’ll get a visit from Cadent to disconnect you from the network. Mark your diary!

We did have someone come by and check but they didn’t dig up in the road, they were satisfied with the disconnection on our property even though it was buried and they didn’t inspect it…??? Who knows.

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They may have passed over the pipe with a “sniffer” and not found any hydrocarbons. No digging required.

My termination is above ground, so can easily be inspected.

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(The wall was built behind the existing meter box, so where the box was does need touching up.)

If Cadent want to disconnect the spur then that’s fine by me.

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II think getting your meter removed is standard and can be done by your energy provider, however if you don’t use any gas for 12m they are meant to disconnect you from the gas network by digging up the street.

This is what I was quoted £1600 for at the top of the thread, in the end they didn’t charge me a penny though.

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Interesting. As I never used gas between March and October anyway that means I am over a year without gas usage. I should expect a hole in front of my drive any day now.