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I'm new to this forum and desperate for some guidance so hoping someone may be able to help.
I'm in a business partnership which basically just ticks over. We had a large business unit but in January this year moved to a much smaller unit in the same park. We mainly use this as a storage unit and only access it a few times a month.
My partner went to the unit yesterday to find a letter inside - not posted but left on the side - from British Gas. It said that as we had failed to pay the outstanding electricity debt, they had obtained a court warrant to enter and disconnect the power and that we now had to pay them £350 warrant costs on top of the debt owed to them.
This is the part where I put my hand up and say that we cocked up.... When we moved to the newer unit neither one of the partners remembered to inform BG about the move. Each one assumed the other had done it. Our old unit account with BG was paid by smart meter readings and direct debit and since moving the monthly bills had continued to be deducted so we thought nothing of it. However it seems that the last tenant at our new unit left with outstanding debt.
I'm fully aware that our (genuine) oversight is nobodys fault but our own but we haven't received a single letter from British Gas. We have a postbox on our unit (and get plenty of other junk mail delivered) and have received nothing from BG. Had we had a letter notifying us that a warrant was going to be sought we would have acted immediately to prevent this going any further.
We spoke to BG and they confirm that they can see we have been paying the bills at our old unit (as well as the new tenants there) and that they will refund the payments we made but they believe they have done everything legally required of them and are entitled to persue the warrant court costs from us.
Had BG at any point informed us (at our home address) that we were paying for electricity at someone elses unit I'm sure that we both would have realised that we had forgotten to switch over and all this could have been avoided.
Surely without any letter we had no right to reply in court? Where do we stand? Are we liable for every penny?
I'm in a business partnership which basically just ticks over. We had a large business unit but in January this year moved to a much smaller unit in the same park. We mainly use this as a storage unit and only access it a few times a month.
My partner went to the unit yesterday to find a letter inside - not posted but left on the side - from British Gas. It said that as we had failed to pay the outstanding electricity debt, they had obtained a court warrant to enter and disconnect the power and that we now had to pay them £350 warrant costs on top of the debt owed to them.
This is the part where I put my hand up and say that we cocked up.... When we moved to the newer unit neither one of the partners remembered to inform BG about the move. Each one assumed the other had done it. Our old unit account with BG was paid by smart meter readings and direct debit and since moving the monthly bills had continued to be deducted so we thought nothing of it. However it seems that the last tenant at our new unit left with outstanding debt.
I'm fully aware that our (genuine) oversight is nobodys fault but our own but we haven't received a single letter from British Gas. We have a postbox on our unit (and get plenty of other junk mail delivered) and have received nothing from BG. Had we had a letter notifying us that a warrant was going to be sought we would have acted immediately to prevent this going any further.
We spoke to BG and they confirm that they can see we have been paying the bills at our old unit (as well as the new tenants there) and that they will refund the payments we made but they believe they have done everything legally required of them and are entitled to persue the warrant court costs from us.
Had BG at any point informed us (at our home address) that we were paying for electricity at someone elses unit I'm sure that we both would have realised that we had forgotten to switch over and all this could have been avoided.
Surely without any letter we had no right to reply in court? Where do we stand? Are we liable for every penny?
