Utilities when you move in: readings, deemed contracts and switching

Take the readings before you take the coat off

The first thing to do in a house you have just been handed is walk to the meters and photograph them. Gas, electricity, and the water meter if there is one. It takes two minutes and it is the only evidence you will ever have of where your usage started.

Citizens Advice puts it plainly: read your meters on the day you move in and give the readings to the current supplier, so they can give you an accurate first bill. Everything else in this guide is easier if you have done that.

• ✓Photograph the display, and the serial number on the meter as well.
• ✓Do it before the removals van is unloaded, while the house is still empty and quiet.
• ✓If a meter is external and you cannot find it, note that too: a missing meter is a thing to raise, not to forget.

What a deemed contract actually is

When you tell the existing supplier you have moved in, you are put onto what is called a deemed contract. It is a contract you did not choose and did not sign: the supply was already there, you are using it, so a contract is deemed to exist.

Citizens Advice describes it as the supplier's default or standard variable tariff. Ofgem describes a deemed rate contract as one where the rates you pay could go up and down.

It is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean. It does not mean you have been signed up to anything long term, and it does not mean you are stuck. It does mean the tariff was chosen by circumstance rather than by you, which is a reason to look at it once, at a moment of your choosing, rather than to panic about it on day one.

Do not switch on the first day

There is a common instinct to fix the tariff immediately. Resist it for a week or two. A switch started before your account exists, before the readings are registered and before you know which supplier you actually have, is a switch that gets tangled.

The order that works is: readings first, account opened in your name, first bill checked against your own photograph, then look at what else is available.

Closing the old property properly

The other half of this is the house you left. Send closing readings and a forwarding address to every supplier at the old property, on the day you hand the keys over.

Final bills are estimated unless you give them something better, and an estimate raised after you have gone is a bill you will spend an evening arguing about.

• ✓Gas, electricity and water at the old address.
• ✓A forwarding address, so the final bill reaches you rather than the new owner.
• ✓Keep the photographs until the final bill is settled and the account is closed.

Where this applies

Deemed contracts and the Ofgem rules described here cover Great Britain. Northern Ireland has its own energy market and its own regulator, so the terms and the protections differ.

Reading the meter on the day you move in is worth doing wherever you are.