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  • British Gas admits agents break into struggling customers’ homes

    British Gas admits agents break into struggling customers’ homes

    The boss of British Gas owner Centrica has said he is horrified that debt collectors have broken into vulnerable customers’ homes to fit energy meters.

    The Times found debt agents working for British Gas expressed excitement at putting meters in the homes of people who had fallen behind on energy bills.

    “This happened when people were acting on behalf of British Gas. There is nothing that can be said to excuse it,” Chris O’Shea told the BBC.

    The firm has suspended installations.

    The suspension follows an undercover investigation by the Times whose reporter went with agents working for Arvato Financial Solutions’ – a company used by British Gas to pursue debts – to the home of a single father with three children. 

    After establishing the property was unoccupied, the reporter observed the agents work with a locksmith to force their way in and install a prepayment meter.

    It reported that the locksmith said: “This is the exciting bit. I love this bit.”

    Mr O’Shea told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “The contractor that we’ve employed, Arvato, has let us down but I am accountable for this.

    “This happened when people were acting on behalf of British Gas. There is nothing that can be said to excuse it.”

    Agents also fitted a prepayment meter by force at the home of a young mother with an infant baby, the newspaper said.

    Others who experienced similar treatment, according to materials seen by The Times, include a mother whose daughter is disabled and a woman described as having mobility problems.

    Centrica said the suspension – where it applied to the court for a warrant to install a pre-payment meter – would last “until at least after winter” and that protecting vulnerable people was its priority.

    Business Secretary Grant Shapps said he was “horrified” by the findings.

    “Switching customers – and particularly those who are vulnerable – to prepayment meters should only ever be a last resort and every other possible alternative should be exhausted,” he said.

    “These findings suggest British Gas are doing anything but this.”

    Energy firms are required to have exhausted all other options before installing a prepayment meter, and should not do so for those “in the most vulnerable situations”.

    It comes amid the rising cost of living and as household bills soar in part due to mounting energy costs.

  • Carmen review – vivid revival finds ENO on fighting form

    Carmen review – vivid revival finds ENO on fighting form

    English National Opera may have been given a stay of execution but it knows it has to keep fighting to justify its existence, and its latest revival of Bizet’s Carmen throws a well-aimed punch. Calixto Bieito’s staging, first seen here in 2012, has become one of his most enduring at theatres worldwide, and with reason: the Catalan director’s penchant for shocks and violence is right at home in an opera with menace lurking behind every good tune. Alfons Flores’s stark, black set design conjures an imposing atmosphere economically, with a gallows-like flagpole, a phone box you can almost smell, or a huge Osborne bull. When the stage briefly fills up with the smugglers’ messy fleet of 1970s Mercs it seems almost comically crowded.

    The soldiers in the opening scene set the tone: full of pent-up testosterone, they are not only dangerous but dangerously childish. The women hold their own, however: this staging may have originated pre-Weinstein but, while there’s plenty of casual cruelty, thanks to Jamie Manton’s skilful revival direction it doesn’t feel overly voyeuristic. Manton gets some cracking performances from his cast – the final scene is fingernail-gnawingly tense even though you know what’s about to happen – and Christopher Cowell’s English translation comes across clearly.

    Returning as Don José, Sean Panikkar sounds a little lightweight to begin with but grows in vocal stature as his character disintegrates. He’s riveting at the end. Carrie-Ann Williams makes an impressive ENO debut as a late stand-in Micaëla, her top notes big and radiant, her softest passages slightly too quiet – as are Nmon Ford’s low notes as Escamillo, though he has a lithe swagger otherwise. There’s vivid support across the cast, especially from Keel Watson’s arrogant Zuniga, and an exuberant children’s chorus drawn from two of the local primary schools ENO works with.

    But everything revolves around Carmen. Ginger Costa-Jackson, another ENO debutant, is magnetic. She sings in a strong, wine-dark mezzo-soprano and knows how to hold the stage through stillness. In her Habanera and her other big solos she never seems rushed; the world goes at her pace, thanks to the subtle breathing space that Kerem Hasan’s conducting affords her, and the precision of the orchestra’s response. They, the enlarged chorus, and indeed the whole company, are on fighting form.

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