What is the consequence of failing to allow the water company to install a meter? Under the water industry act 1991 water providers must have a plan to manage the demand for water in certain areas. If they choose to install compulsory water meters but aren’t allowed to because a resident fails to contact them, what is the consequence for the resident?
If the residence falls within one of the categories for which a water company can insist on a water meter, then the resident cannot refuse. See House of Commons, &quot;Water meters: the rights of customers and water companies&quot;. That brief says that a water company can insist on installing a meter if the customer: uses an automatic watering device (such as a garden sprinkler); automatically fills a swimming pool or pond; has a large bath; uses a reverse osmosis softening unit; has a power shower; is the new occupier of a property (provided an unmetered bill has not already been sent to that occupier); or lives in an area which has been determined by the Secretary of State to be an area of serious water stress and subject to a metering programme as part of a plan to maintain secure water supplies. See also Tom Haynes and Ruth Emery, &quot;What a water meter could do to your bills – and why you may be forced to have one&quot;, The Telegraph (1 June 2023): If your water supplier has been granted legal powers to fit compulsory water meters, you don't have any right to refuse one. As Andy White, of the Consumer Council for Water, puts it: “It's not possible for a customer to refuse where a water company has approval for compulsory metering from Defra.” If a water company has the statutory right to install a meter, and the customer has no right to refuse, this could be enforced by injunction.
Yes, see section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985: (1)In a lease to which this section applies (as to which, see sections 13 and 14) there is implied a covenant by the lessor— (a)to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house (including drains, gutters and external pipes), (b)to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for the supply of water, gas and electricity and for sanitation (including basins, sinks, baths and sanitary conveniences, but not other fixtures, fittings and appliances for making use of the supply of water, gas or electricity), and (c)to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for space heating and heating water. ... (6)In a lease in which the lessor’s repairing covenant is implied there is also implied a covenant by the lessee that the lessor, or any person authorised by him in writing, may at reasonable times of the day and on giving 24 hours’ notice in writing to the occupier, enter the premises comprised in the lease for the purpose of viewing their condition and state of repair. Also see the dot.gov guidance, especially the section entitled &quot;Your responsibilities&quot;: You should give your landlord access to the property to inspect it or carry out repairs. Your landlord has to give you at least 24 hours’ notice and visit at a reasonable time of day, unless it’s an emergency and they need immediate access.
If I have correctly untangled the law, Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act part 3 identifies as a condition where you are not prohibited from revealing personal data: The processing is necessary for compliance with any legal obligation to which the data controller is subject, other than an obligation imposed by contract. The Animal Welfare Act 25(1) says An inspector may require the holder of a licence to produce for inspection any records which he is required to keep by a condition of the licence I can't tell if you are required to keep customer names, but if you are, it looks like the pieces fit together and you would have to provide the records. Call a solicitor to be sure, though.
Can my water district's billing practices still be legal? They are likely to be legal, but it isn't entirely clear. Contract Law ETo data is not published in advance of billing, which seems to violate Contract Law's notion of agreement between parties. A contract can set forth a formula for determining a price, rather than a particular dollar amount. For example, my utility company charges me a rate for electricity and natural gas that is based upon the market price of those commodities that it has to pay (although since my utility is a regulated utility, it has to get approval from a government agency each time it does so to confirm that it is really charging the market rate). Similarly, in the construction industry, and in government contracts, &quot;cost plus&quot; contracts that charge based upon whatever is spent to get the job done plus a market up by the general contractor, are not uncommon. Proposition 218 The Proposition 218 analysis is trickier. This is clearly not a tax or an assessment. So the threshold question is whether this is a Property Related Fee. In December of 2018 a legislative analysis stated that: A fee is a charge imposed on an individual or business for a service or facility provided directly to an individual or business. Local governments charge fees for a wide range of purposes, from park entry fees to building plan check fees. The amount of the fee may not exceed the cost of government to provide the service. Proposition 218 restricts property-related fees, defined as fees imposed &quot;as an incident of property ownership.&quot; At this time, there is no consensus as to which fees meet this definition. The drafters of Proposition 218 indicate that it was their intent to include most fees commonly collected on monthly bills to property owners, such as those for water delivery, garbage service, sewer service, and storm water management fees. Other analysts of Proposition 218 contend that fees that vary by level of service (for example, a fee for metered water usage) should not be considered a property-related fee, because it is based on service usage, rather than property ownership. Because Proposition 218 does not restrict nonproperty-related fees, the definition of this term will be an important and sensitive issue for the Legislature and courts. But, the California Supreme Court clarified this in July of 2006 in the case of Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency v. Verjil, ruling that metered rates for consumption of water are “property-related fees” subject to Proposition 218. So, assuming that your Water District is a governmental agency and not just a private company like a Ditch Company from which you receive privately owned water because you have shares in it, Proposition 218 should apply. This leads to the second question: Does the amount of the fee exceed the cost of government to provide the service? This is a non-trivial question with lots of ambiguities associated with it, that are fundamentally accounting issues, regarding the level of generality at which you analyze it. At the most general level, the water district clearly isn't allowed to collect more in fees in the aggregate than is necessary for it to break even from purchasing the water from someone and conducting its operations (assuming that it is a governmental entity). But, assuming that this threshold is met, the question is then how much discretion the water district has to allocate its costs, many of which are fixed costs that benefit all of the people in the water district, to particular users. It sounds from the question as if some of its costs involve purchasing water from a wholesaler, and some involve things like distributing that water to individual customers, metering usage, invoicing customers and collecting payments. Also, another question of generality is over what time period costs have to match services. At a fairly broad level of generality, perhaps it is permissible to match fees to cost on an annual basis. Certainly, the matching doesn't have to be any more specific than for an individual billing cycle, but it isn't obvious that this much precision in timing is required. Almost certainly, the water district is entitled to some deference in how it decides to allocate costs to services when there is more than one reasonable way to do so. Very likely, the water district evaluated its billing policy with its municipal attorney in light of Proposition 218 when it adopted this system and obtained an opinion of counsel that its plan was compliant. Indeed, it probably has covenants in its municipal bond offerings that require it to do so. Therefore, it is very unlikely that the water district's billing policy blatantly and unambiguously violates Proposition 218, even though it make be pushing the envelope with a billing scheme that isn't clearly allowed or clearly forbidden by court precedents that are factually similar. If that is the case, you might find a lawyer willing to bring a class action lawsuit to test the validity of the billing system, but it would likely be a long and difficult case with an uncertain outcome that the water district is more likely to win than you are, although it still might be a technical violation. Given the small stakes you have in the question with your own relatively small water bill, and the high stakes that the water district has in justifying its billing system for all of its customers, it is hard to see how this would be an economic battle for you to fight.
In New Zealand, employers have a duty to take all practicable steps to ensure their workplace is safe for employees and for others who come onto the premises (Health and Safety in Employment Act s6). So if there was a wasp nest and they didn't do anything about it, presumably they would be liable. If it was a random bee, I doubt they would be liable, because they couldn't practicably prevent a bee flying in if, say, someone opened the door. The state would have to charge the company as HSEA is a criminal provisions act. If the plaintiff brought a claim based on the tort of negligence, they would have to prove that the company had a duty of care, breached that duty, the breach caused damage, and the damage was not too remote from the breach. The company does have a duty of care to their patrons. The standard for this is what a reasonable person would have done in the circumstances. If they didn't remove a wasp nest they may have breached their duty of care. The breach will have caused damage (a wasp sting). It wouldn't have been too remote since had they removed the wasp nest, the person wouldn't have been stung. However if a random bee flew in, the company probably wouldn't have breached their duty of care, and if the court found that they had, the damage would probably be too remote or not have been caused by them directly.
I spent a few years working in and around the Energy industry - including a stint working at a supplier, I'm no longer there so unfortunately I no longer have access to the email chains I had discussing this with legal. The consensus at the time was that a "traditional" i.e. non-half-hourly (NHH), non-smart meter reading itself was not considered personal data - they are conceptually tied to a metering point (which may or may not be a physical meter), not to an individual and don't represent an individual's energy consumption (the granularity of the reading is insufficient to tell anything about the usage profile) But this information, while all around the implementation of GDPR it was a couple of years back and to be honest it was bugging me that I might be out-of-date on the current practices so I reached out to a former colleague who was the Data Protection Officer at the supplier I worked at to try and get a more up-to-date take. He's since moved on but was there until recently so has more experience with the topic since GDPR actually went into effect. I asked him whether a) estimated opening reads were considered "personal data" and b) what would happen with a request to change one under article 16 and he had this to say, I've translated industry-speak in square brackets: a) for NHH ["Non Half Hourly" - meters that are read ad-hoc, essentially all non-smart domestic meters will be this] an estimated reading wasn't personal data automatically until the billing flag was set in CRM and those would be the only ones we'd include on an SAR [Subject Access Request], any others are internal data not personal. HH ["Half Hourly" - meters for higher consumption users, typically larger business premises are billed on increments for each half hour so have readings for each] and remote [smart meter] readings are always personal for domestic and microb [micro-businesses are a certain class of non-domestic energy customer see condition 7A] b) erm no! we'd only change it if the value in CRM didn't match the value in the D10 [industry Data Flow used to transmit meter reads] for some reason. if they match it's an accurate representation of what we estimate the reading to be so it's just a vanilla billing dispute not a data protection issue so i'd have punted it to [name of person who was head of metering] From that it would sound as though the estimated read would count as personal data - so long as it's being used for billing purposes, but that doesn't mean they have to accept your read in it's stead. It all comes down to accuracy - GDPR requires that personal data be "accurate" but provides no definition as to what "accurate" means (which makes sense since you can't give a one-size-fits-all answer that isn't an encyclopedia) and while The Electricity Directive 2019 confirms the need for accuracy in billing again it doesn't tell us what that means. The implementation is left to member state regulators. In the UK this is OFGEM and all opening meter readings are validated through third parties (so you don't end up with the foxes guarding the hen house!) and are calculated using the following formula: Last validated reading for the meter point &lt;= supplied reading &lt;= (expected daily usage x number of days since last validated reading x 2.5) where "expected daily usage" is obtained from a database maintained by the regulator - it's calculated off meter type, property type, property use, previous validated reads etc. So if the customer provides a reading that falls outside the above the supplier can (and in practice invariably will) reject it as being inaccurate. Now this is why the when a meter reading is provided matters - reads you provide are always assumed to be the read on the day you give them. With opening reads there's some leeway, I can't remember the official rule on how much but usually they give you up to the next estimated read is generated but more on that later. Now if the reading you're trying to submit is a "now" reading and it's failed the validation criteria and you aren't happy with the rejection you can force the issue by demanding the supplier come read the meter. You don't say how long has passed since the opening read - more than the week from what you've said so presumably at least a month (guessing you've had at least your first bill). Now if they are saying the opening read was X (based on the estimated usage) and you're it should have been X + Y and the current reading is X + Y + Z you want to pay your actual usage Z not Y + Z. What you need to do is dispute the opening read, which you're entitled to do, arguably GDPR of Article 16 gives you this right, but on it's own it's a weak argument. There's established means by which an estimated read's "accuracy" is determined and assuming they followed that they're going to just tell you that as far as they are concerned it is accurate. Any challenge to that accuracy is going to have to be done within the legal/regulatory frameworks for assessing accuracy, that's what they're there for, if they won't accept your reading escalate that to the regulator - and as soon as you can. OFGEM for example allow disputing of opening reads for 12 months - it doesn't have to be resolved within that 12 months it just has to be lodged with them within that time. If you try and use the GDPR angle to pursue this IMHO it's going to muddy the waters and not help you get what you need - pursue this on billing accuracy.
If I may paraphrase the scenario: The customer has a contract with the insurer The customer is contemplating undergoing a certain procedure and is unsure if it is covered under the contract The customer calls the insurer to ask this specific question The insurer says "yes" The customer undergoes the procedure The insurer refuses to pay on the ground that it is not covered under the contract. Let's put aside issues of evidence and what can be proved and assume these facts are not in dispute. There is no question that the contract has been renegotiated; it hasn't. This avoids the necessity of considering if the insurer's employee has the authority to do this or it the customer can rely that they do even if they don't. There are two possibilities: The procedure is covered and the insurer must pay under contract The procedure isn't covered and the insurer must pay under the tort of negligent misstatement. The insurer is vicariously liable for the actions of its employee. The insurer owes a duty of care to a customer who asks such a question to answer it correctly. It is foreseeable that the customer would act on the insurer's advice and incur costs that they may have avoided if the correct advice had been given. Nothing is ever certain in the law but this is as close as you can get.
You would report unpermitted lock replacement to the home owner. The building code regulates new construction and renovations, and is not a requirement of any and all residences. This seems to correspond to a "secondary suite", which is supposed to be registered with the city (if it is allowed in your city). Here is a link for Vancouver, for instance. Such suites are supposed to be registered and inspected, the inspection being carried out by Development, Building and Licencing: By-Law Compliance &amp; Administration (a division of the city government). This article discusses some of the legal problems that can arise from an illegal secondary suite, however the penalties would land on the property owner, and he may not have approved of this subletting or the basement suite. A less-nuclear first step would therefore be reporting it to the property owner.