20/01/2014 Inside Out London

Hello, I'm Matthew Wright and you're watching Inside Out London. On

tonight's Energy Special... At the back of the stairs, under the

cover, done in the cellar, you will be amazed at what is going on. We

reveal how more and more people are stealing gas and electricity. The

meter has been interfered with, it has a fake seal. We join the energy

detectives as we hunt down the power thieves. All the power is not being

billed. They are getting it for free. For now. Also tonight, we find

out how some Londoners are beating the bills. We are interested in both

the power it produces, and the heat, that is normally wasted in our

power stations, but we capture it here, but it into a new network of

bikes, like a large central heating system for a community. -- network

of pipes. As the political row over energy

prices grows ever more heated, a growing number of people are now

choosing to steal their gas and electricity. For some, it boils down

to being cash-strapped and desperate, but there are others who

are happy to cheat the system while living the high life. In this

exclusive report for Inside Out, Mark Jordan joins the enforcement

teams as they hunt down the power thieves.

Energy prices are making headlines as our bills hit an all-time high.

Honest households pay up. But ?30 a year of our bill is paying for the

power thieves. The meter has definitely been interfered with. It

has a fake seal in the top. Tonight, fiddling the meter, the growing

numbers helping themselves to the nation's power. They have spurred

the power from next door. At the back of the stairs, under the

cupboard, down in the cellar. You'll be amazed what's going on! Every

year people die through tampering with a meter. A normal bicycle inner

tube. This tube would literally be across here like that. We're going

to disconnect the meter and shut the supply off. This is the story of

those out to cut off the power thieves.

The British Gas training academy in Leicester. Here, engineers learn how

to spot tampering of gas and electric supply. It's never been

more needed. A difficult economic climate, equals more people feeling

this is the only way they can get their energy. This is a huge

problem, we believe that perhaps ?500 million worth of gas and

electricity are stolen across the industry per year and in terms of

what that means for customers, potentially ?30 a year on their

bills. That is a lot of money, they should not have to pay it. For the

next few days, I'm riding along with Piers and Malcolm, power theft

investigators. The most bizarre case I have ever witnessed was in a

nursing home. When we caught him, it cost the manager ?25,000. The

biggest hill I have had was ?290,000. But this morning's call is

for much smaller fry. The first three we have got our domestic. A

routine meter reading on an East London estate has discovered a

single mother-of-three tampering with her gas meter. There was what

appears to be a cooker hose at the time that actually replaced the gas

meter. Even with gas central heating, they only paid ?15 last

year. How many live here? My mum, two sisters and myself. The meter's

back, but hasn't been installed correctly. Because the mother has

children, she's considered vulnerable and can't be cut off.

Sun-mac this is the bypass. -- this is the bypass. We try to trace back

who is doing this. We find trends where people are going and estates,

and these people will charge from ?10 up to ?500 a time, they can do

ten to 15 in a day. They are not putting themselves at risk. If

something happens there, it is the adjoining properties that will be

affected. This was the scene that people on Dundas Road will cut two.

Whatever the cause, gas explosions can be deadly. A suspected gas

exposure and inside a terraced house. In Sheffield last year, this

entire house was blown apart. Miraculously, no-one died. It's a

chilling reminder of the dangers of gas. The damage of that explosion

was so great that authorities were never able to pinpoint the exact

cause. Emergency services were worried about other dangers, so they

decided to conduct a test. The police were on site and the networks

were on site, they asked us whether or not we felt it was right to have

a look at some of the other supplies in the street. And from looking at

about 20 houses in a single street, sure enough, we found five gas

thefts and two electricity theft is. It is a great example of what the

scale of the issue is. Little now shocks Mark. He's had 80-year-old

pensioners removing gas meters. She showed me by getting some grips out

from under the sink, started to undo the meter. What is this one? This

Billy impacts on safety. A bicycle in a. They have used it to bridge

the meter. This tube would literally just be across here, like that. We

have come here to inspect the electricity meter. This flat's total

bill of just ?5 last year led them to find this dangerous bypass. Labor

Party Malcolm prepares evidence for prosecution, and the bill for years

of stolen electricity. It was back billed since 2008, from

when the account started. It will be a big bill. If you can get away with

it, imagine what you could save on dozens of properties. Lewisham

Council has discovered landlords stealing supplies from the street.

It's called hotwiring. We have had some cases where houses have caught

fire. One landlord has over 50 properties, all of them have been

hot-wired, another company we were coming across that mainly run stolen

metres have around 60 or 70 different property companies around

London. Piers regularly finds tenants afraid to speak out about

landlords charging them for stolen power. I don't know nothing.

Landlords of that kind will fill up the properties will peak -- with

people who cannot complain, a lot of them illegal immigrants. They do not

complain for fear of being deported. This will be disconnected. I

regularly visit homes where people have had to electricity for a couple

of months. Maybe they are running a generator or maybe they are just in

the dark. So what of the underground criminal network connecting

supplies? I'm meeting a man who pleaded guilty to digging up the

street and illegally connecting electricity to more than 1,500 North

London properties. I was basically opening up the main cable and doing

the relevant tapping. So You supplied that electricity but then

it was upto the landlord to contact the electric company to pay for it?

Yes. Somebody else would sort it out, the meter man would come out.

Most people could steal the electric. If the meter man don't

come, yes. There are thousands of properties which have no supplier.

And they are getting electric for free. This man was given a suspended

prison sentence and ordered to pay ?50,000 for criminal damage to power

supplies. Back on the road, we're in a very

rich part of Essex. Homes here often sell for over ?1 million. But the

team have a tip-off about an eight-bed mansion with ?300,000

pounds worth of cars on the forecourt. -- ?300,000. But the

house is suspiciously "energy efficient"! We had an anonymous

tip-off that they were putting in new services for gas and how it is

dropped by about 80%. Where's the light switch for this room you Mac

Within minutes of the team's arrival, the power to most of the

house mysteriously goes off! Something is not right. My suspicion

is that the back of that house and that the average is often on metered

supply. It is now switched off. But where to look for the illegal

supply? Just looking to see if any of it has been taken up. This

massive gas heating system isn't connected to the official meter. Nor

are those electric gates. Cannot see anything in here except the alarm.

Where is it likely to be? It could be disguised. It is a real hustle.

The owners insist the only meters are the ones outside. An

hour-and-a-half into the search, Piers finds another supply. No, I

can see the point. Another electricity meter. I think we have

found what we are looking for. Let's see if I can trace the gas supplier.

OK. There we have another gas meter. All the power used through these two

metres is not being billed. So they are getting it for free. For now.

Soon, it is a mansion without power. The supply is cut off. It will not

be restored until an estimated ?6,000 of stolen energy is paid for.

I always talk about need and greed, these people can obviously afford to

pay for their energy. Yet, they are not. They have done something to get

energy for nothing. Theft is being made all the easier by the internet.

Video guides on stealing energy. And even how to reverse meters with a

smartphone. For just ?30 you can illegally install a spare meter to

run in between the energy company's readings. A new local scam can go

global in days. It's a cat-and-mouse game, close one

scam and something new emerges. The latest comes from China. Criminals

openly advertising to rig meters in Chinese community newspapers. They

will help you save on bills. Conquer expensive British bills. Take

control of your metres with the super-money saving device.

Especially suitable for take-aways, restaurants and homes. That Chinese

scam has spread across Britain. British Gas, we have come to

inspect. Piers and Malcolm think they've found it in this fish and

chip shop. It doesn't seem to be moving. The index does not appear to

be working or registering anything of the consumption and it appears to

have a fake seal in the top of the index. It's certainly in keeping

with the others. There will be no frying tonight in this shop as he

immediately orders the disconnection of the metre. The consequences

though are that we'll take that metre immediately off supply and cut

off the gas. He soon unravels the crude Sam from China is being

uncovered in restaurants across Britain. We remove that. First he

pops out the fake, blue seal. These are available on the internet. I'm

now removing the index mechanism. He exposes the cogs that drive the

metre mechanism. It's the moment of truth. I don't know if you can see

that. It's got teeth that have been taken off. Cut off half the teeth

and you half the bill. This one has just a single tooth left. Only a

traction of the gas is being recorded on that. You still don't

know anything about that, when that happened or who could have done it?

Mean child, Malcolm produce s an estimated bill, it's ?1,782 - 10 for

the last four months. We'll give you a hard copy. Cue pay that now,

otherwise I have to tell the engineers to make sure the supply is

kept off and we'll walk away with the metre. It sounds tough, but they

can only charge for the few months he's been with British Gas. How

theft experts -- theft experts warn that thieves can change suppliers.

If you can change supply easily as it is now, if you get caught

extracting electricity from one company, you could leave and go to

another one such as Scottish Power or British Gas and then if you get

caught by then cue move on, on to another company and this is the

problem. Several power suppliers actually refuse to take part in the

programme, apart from British Gas, does that surprise you? Not really,

because they know what happens. If you say there's ?1 million of

electricity being extracted from your company their profits will be

the same, because that ?1 million loss will be spread over all the

honest bill paying customers, so they've lost nothing and I don't

think they would be really happy to say that. Back at the chip shop, the

owner's credit card means this is one bill we won't be picking up.

Immunity from prosecution not collude included. -- not included.

There is just one area of power theft where police, not power

companies, take the lead. Nationwide, police uncover over 20

cannabis farms a day. Most stealing their electricity. Essex police raid

up to six a week. One room like this can cost ?800 a month in

electricity. One, if you get build for that the police will be

suspicious and two, the criminals just don't want to pay it. It's

thought one third of the electricity stolen in Britain goes on cannabis

farms. The profits are huge. Each plant can yield ?500 worth of

cannabis. They follow the wires all around the house and they think that

this electricity is being stolen from the neighbours. You can see

there's a power cable. It's coming from next door. They've spread the

power from next door. London Fire Brigade report a doubling of

electric fires of dangerously stolen electric. Organised crime gangs come

across this operation and they are not happy when you are ruining

thousands of pounds worth of commitment. This is a booby trap.

Bill Stupples trains investigators. As soon as you put your feet on

there, the spikes would push through and you would be impaled on the

spikes. Once farms are raided, Essex police are now under orders to

destroy everything that makes growing cannabis responsible. Power

theft, whether on cannabis farms or the chip shop, it's booming and

unless detected we get the bill. Total invoice amount for ?7,702.88.

Catching the thieves is costly. Few will ever see prison. Here, cheeky

enough to ask for a discount of the We don't offer a discount. The light

may go out, but the bills still are on us. We'll cut the electricity

off. OK. With energy prices rocketing, plenty

of Londoners are struggling to pay their bills this winter. Now, most

of us rely on big companies for our power needs, but what if local

communities could generate their own? Well, that's exactly what some

forward-think London neighbours are trying, generating cheaper energy

for residents that's kinder to the planet too.

This issiesling tonne. It's generally thought of as upmarket,

but those that know the area well know that it houses many at the

bottom end of the social ladder. There are lots of large housing

estates with people living on them, who struggle to stay warm. My

parents, they're pensioners, their bills are massive and they can't

afford it. They put it on for 90 minutes to take the chill off. In

the severe weather, but no heating at all, and it goes on for three or

four days. That's when you want the heat. Energy regulator Ofgem's

recent report certainly highlight the problem. It shows that utility

bills have risen on average ?300 over the past three years. This is

an increase of nearly 30%. The average annual wage of full-time

employees rose by just 1.4% over the same peer kwoed. -- period. Help is

at hand for residents of three large council estates here. They keep warm

through a system called district heating. In Denmark, 60% of all

homes are already heated in this way. You don't pay for your

individual needs. Many homes are all heated from the same boiler. There

is a big room that heats the whole estate our heating is in with the

rent, which is a good thing, because I don't get the big bills, which

makes a difference. Marvellous. It's heated adequately nine months of the

year. It goes off at the end of May and comes on again end of September.

Hot water all the year around. Their heat and hot water couldn't be

produced more locally. Just across the road sits the Bunhill Energy

Centre and it's a power station with a difference. It's tiny. It's smack,

bang in the centre of London. In fact, you would hardly notice it was

there. It was designed and the building work overseen by two London

engineers working forriesling tonne council. What we have is a large

generator, but unlike conventional electricity, we are interested in

both the power that it produces and the heat that it produces. So we

generate electricity, which is sold to the National Grid and is used in

the local area. But importantly, we capture the heat and that's what we

are after, the heat that's normally wasted in the power stations, wasted

up into cooling towers and into the sea and rivers. We capture is here,

put it into a new network of heat pipes and take it to the council

estates. It's just in the form of hot water. There's no magic. There's

no hocus pocus about this. It's quite simple. It's like a very large

central heating system for a community. Our aim is to supply

cheaper, greener heat, so to help poverty and they get cheaper bills,

because you have the efficiency of scale and so by having - you're not

having individual gas boilers, so it's easier to maintain. All of the

income that we'll get from the selling of the electricity and

running of the scheme will be passed on to residents and also it will

help set up a revolving fund to do other projects. The most vulnerable

in our society will face a harsh challenge this winter. That's why I

think the scheme that we have developed, it will make a big

difference, I think, to people's lives. In reality, what we are

seeking to achieve for residents is at least the 10% saving on their

fuel bills. The Mayor of London's office realise that changes have to

be made and they believe that decentralisation is one of the

answers, meaning we need to look at lots of different schemes. The Mayor

wants to see 25% generated locally, because that will deliver cheaper,

lower-carbion and more secure energy and that is that is the way to do

it. The Scandinavians started over a generation ago. The UK has been

lucky with relatively cheap gas until very recently as the North Sea

has dwindled and there has been more pressure on. We are a long way

behind Scandinavia, but we hope to do more and more. These targets may

seem like pie-in-the-sky at the moment, but not according to prove

sore -- professor Henry Wynn. Sweden has been at it since the early 1950s

and they're now 80% of the residents on district heating. I doubled

checked with London today and they've got 3%. The sky's the limit.

The savings you can get you can absolutely get lots of. Moving

London from the 3% to the Mayor's dream of 25% will not be easy

though. It could mean widespread disruption for Londoners, pipes

laid, roads dug up and households replumbed. Professor Wynn is looking

in to how the make the squed acceptable on a large -- idea

acceptable on a large scale. The difficulty is more to do with the

social acceptability of district heating in an environment where

there are many more forms. It has to be made attractive to the residents.

It has to be cheaper, or a bit cheaper than what they're getting

already. They have not to worry about hot water pipes into the

bidding. People are funding it, then to be happy to invest in a form of

investment which might take ten or 15 years to get a pay-back. There is

capital cost to this. The Mayor is doing everything he can in his power

to stimulate investment, to redisc that so the -- rerisk it so the

public and private sector will invest in this kind of energy

future. -- redisc it so the public and private sector will invest in

this kind of energy in the future. One company is already investing in

district heating. In south walk, Veolia Environment Services work

with the local council and dust carts. You put your rubbish out and

it comes back at hot water. We are taking the non-repsych rubbish. It's

like a power station, instead of using coal, we use waste. It goes no

the boiler, heat the water and turbine it and produce electricity.

The cherry on the cake is to use the waste heat to heat houses. We

started doing that around the country. It's the first time in

London. It might be food and polythene bags and other packaging,

that's taken away. It's collected on a Friday. Then under the new

arrangements they'll come back as heat through the communal heating

system. I think it's a good thing. You know the waste isn't going to

landfill as that is running out. You know it's been used to generate heat

and as I understand, at a lower cost to buying it through the fashle grid

or from abroad. It's -- National Grid or from abroad. It's locally

sourced. The idea has been so successful in Norway they have to

import other people's rubbish to keep their power stations going. In

Southwark, the council sees huge potential in it. The cost of burning

waste is much cheaper than extracting oil and gas from the

Earth. So, what we can do is deliver to the residents a much cheaper

energy. It's much better for the environment. It means we are not

delivering waste to landfill and we're not burning unnecessary

amounts of oil and gas. 2500 households will benefit from this.

The estimated costs of energy as we currently have it are just over ?53

per megawatt hour and what they're predicting is that under the new

scheme the cost of energy will drop to about ?41, so it looks like quite

a considerable cost saving. People have lived on this estate for

decades. The costs that we do go through do effect whether people can

afford to live here. If we are reducing the costs through schemes

like this, I think that's a good thing also. It contributes to people

being able to afford to live in the place they've perhaps grown up in.

It might be early days for these progressive schemes, but they're

already starting to give hope to some. With energy prices still at a

premium, it's reassuring to think there is now hope that we can at

least start to keep warm in a cleaner and more oh Fordable way --

affordable way in the future. That's all from this week. If you've

missed any of the show catch up on the iPlayer. Thank you very much for

watching. I'll see you again soon. We're back with more surprising

stories next Monday. Hello, I'm Ellie Crisell with your

90-second update. The mother of Mikaeel Kular has

appeared in court charged with his murder. The three-year-old's body

was found in Fife on Friday. Rosdeep Kular was remanded in custody.

Suspended for refusing to