The Cunning Energy Boss at the Centre of Britain's "Abusive" Smart Meter Scandal
Meet Chris O'Shea — CEO of Centrica, the parent company of British Gas.
Chris O’Shea, chief executive of Centrica since 2020, is at the heart of growing concerns over Britain’s smart meter rollout—one increasingly seen by some as less about Net Zero and progress and more about coercion and control.
Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, is one of the major players in UK’s gas and electricity market—supplying over 10 million households. It emerged from the breakup of British Gas plc in 1997.
Earlier this month, The Telegraph revealed that British Gas and other major providers are now “forcing” customers to accept smart meters—part of an aggressive push to meet net zero targets.
These meters supposedly help Net Zero initiatives by providing real-time data on energy use, encouraging people to reduce consumption and shift usage to off-peak times.
The tactic they’re using to “force” installations? Claim they no longer stock traditional and “dumb” meters. So when your existing one fails or expires, you’re told there’s no alternative.
Such reasoning sounds more like an excuse when you consider that the same O’Shea told a House of Commons committee last year that smart meters should be made “mandatory” in every household.
He also called for an almost militant “street by street” roll out—not comments that sound like a man who would reluctantly bow to supply constraints.
Now, although highly-profitable for energy companies and their partners, these meters carry serious downsides for consumers.
Ones that Ed Milliband—the minister who green-lit the operation back in 2010 during his first stint as Energy Secretary—hasn’t exactly been forthcoming about.
Unreliability
Smart meters were sold as a convenience. But for many, they've become a source of financial pain.
Some models link directly to the customer’s bank account. So suppliers like British Gas have the power to withdraw funds instantly.
If they overcharge, the burden falls on the customer to battle through a taxing complaints process to recoup their cash.
Others function more conventionally, charging users based on regular readings after a certain time period.
But these come with a catch: they're vulnerable to signal failures. The result? Wildly inaccurate bills—and no quick fix.
This isn’t speculation. It’s already happened.
In 2022, British Gas installed a smart meter in George Smith's modest two-bed home in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. He lived there with his wife and six-year-old daughter. He was promised the device would “solve all” his issues.
Instead, his bills exploded.
He was told his smart meter had “signal problems.” But nothing was done. Between February 2022 and October 2023, he was charged nearly £5,000 for electricity—£4,974.92 to be exact.
He switched to Octopus Energy. But the same faulty meter remained, and so did the problem.
Smith, a 49-year-old father of one, believed the charges were wrong—but kept paying to protect his credit score. Falling into arrears risked debt collectors, late fees, and high-interest penalties.
In November 2024, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) admitted that 4.3 million smart meters had gone “dumb”—no longer transmitting data to suppliers, and putting millions at risk of inaccurate bills.
Citizens Advice—a network of local, independent charities in England and Wales that provide free, confidential, and impartial advice to consumers—added weight to the warning.
Of the 52,000 customers who contacted them about energy issues in 2023, nearly half—49%—had problems related to a smart meter.
Control
Buried deep inside Rishi Sunak’s Energy Act 2023 was a clause with chilling implications: the power to remotely switch off your electricity if you’re using smart appliances.
Few noticed it.
And it’s easy to see why.
The Bill runs to 446 pages of dense, jargon-heavy legalese—much of it cross-referencing older laws. To fully understand it, you’d need to wade through over a thousand pages of legislation.
As for the control it facilitates, this all centres around a mechanism called “load control”.
In short, if your home uses smart appliances—like electric vehicle chargers or heat pumps—your energy provider can limit or shut them off remotely during peak demand. It's part of what's called a "demand-side response" (energy rationing) program—meant to help balance the grid.
Put simply: if there’s a supply crunch, they can reduce your access to power with the click of a button.
Ahead of the Act becoming law, the government published a briefing in September 2023, stating:
“Energy smart appliances can be switched on or off remotely but only if the consumer gives consent. Consumers do not have to allow their appliances to be controlled remotely and the Bill wouldn’t change this.”
The question is: how many people signing up for these schemes—tempted by the lure of lower bills—understand what they’re actually agreeing to? Is an 80-year-old pensioner really to read the fine print?
If “consent” resembles anything like that of the Covid vaccine rollout, it doesn’t really constitute consent at all.
Even without direct control, it’s possible energy companies could still “nudge” consumer behaviour—sending scary notifications or quickly setting new steep prices—based on how "compliant" your home is with grid needs.
Privacy
Then comes issues of privacy.
These devices don’t just track how much energy you use. They record it in real time, often in 30-minute intervals.
That data, when analysed, can reveal intimate details of your daily life: when you wake up, when you leave the house, when you go to bed, how many people live with you, what appliances you use, and when.
It’s the digital fingerprint of your household routine.
And the government wanted it.
In October 2022, the Open Rights Group (ORG) exposed plans by the Sunak government to collect this data en masse—demanding energy suppliers hand over millions of meter readings.
The stated purpose? To carry out “financial checks, prevent fraud, prosecute crime”, and “inform future Government policy.”
Thanks to ORG, the plan was dropped in July 2023 after months of campaigning. But the data still exists. And questions remain over who can access it—and how easily it might be shared. It looks like Starmer has already relit attempts.
Even without government overreach, risks remain.
Energy consumption data could be passed to third parties—potentially without explicit consent.
Insurers could adjust premiums based on your “risk profile.” Landlords or lenders could screen applicants based on when they use energy or how much. Advertisers could fine-tune campaigns based on home habits.
Some of this already occurs with smartphones.
Security experts are also sounding the alarm.
According to research by Cybersecurity Insiders, millions of these meters could be hacked. The government says this is high unlikely but a successful breach could expose your personal data—or worse, disrupt your home’s power supply.
So even if the government and corporations don’t find a way to weaponise the data, hackers or hostile foreign actors might.
Prior Enforcement Abuse
It gets worse—much worse.
While the smart meter rollout was launched under the banner of consumer choice and consent, it didn’t take long for that promise not just to unravel, but utterly disintegrate.
A February 2023 Times investigation exposed the truth: British Gas and other suppliers had been quietly forcing-fitting smart meters on thousands of Brits.
They targeted the elderly, the disabled, and low-income families—sometimes with court warrants in hand, sometimes not.
An undercover reporter, posing as a debt collector for Arvato Financial Solutions—the debt agency contracted by O’Shea and gang—witnessed the system from the inside.
He saw first-hand how agents were dispatched to break into homes and install prepayment smart meters without consent.
Among those affected was a single father raising three young children, a mother caring for a four-week-old baby, and another woman, partially sighted and suffering with mobility problems. A pensioner then-suffering in hospital was not spared either.
One collector was caught on camera saying how much he enjoyed such visits.
Once the meter was in, anyone who couldn’t afford to top up would have their heating and electricity instantly cut off—no emergency credit, no exception.
In 2022 alone, according to ITV, an estimated 600,000 people were moved onto prepayment meters. British Gas admitted that it had used court warrants to force-fit at least 20,000 of them that year.
After The Times published its findings, British Gas said they suspended the practice and opened an internal investigation. The company released a carefully worded statement: “This is not who we are — it’s not how we do business.”
O’Shea said at the time: "I was deeply concerned when I saw the way some of our prepayment customers were treated earlier this year.”
Arvato insisted it “acts compliantly at all times,” and claimed the behaviour recorded by the undercover reporter did not reflect the company’s “values”.
In 2016, during a Centrica shareholder meeting, a representative from Fuel Poverty Action stood to raise concerns about vulnerable families being forced onto prepayment meters.
When the moment was recorded on camera, Centrica security officials were seen trying to block the footage—physically covering the lens.
This was seven years before the 2023 Times exposé (see below, 1 min 15 secs in):
The courts played their part.
There was a dramatic rise in the number of warrants being signed off allowing companies to force entry—from 275,000 in 2019 to 345,000 in the eleven months leading up to December 2022.
In those eleven months, magistrates’ courts signed off on an average of 1,032 warrants per day—roughly 43 every hour. That doesn’t seem to constitute case-by-case due diligence but more mass rubber-stamping.
Rather than serving as a legal safeguard, the courts operated like a conveyor belt—churning out entry warrants at industrial speed.
Why? Perhaps because it aligned with the broader agenda—part of the “greater Net Zero good”.
For context, these warrants were issued in magistrates’ courts, where panels—usually made up of laypeople, not career judges—are tasked with ensuring all legal standards are met.
While magistrates do receive training and are advised by legal clerks, they are not required to have extensive legal qualifications.
They were (and still are) our last line of defence.
Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, at the time suggested that energy companies actually tried to conceal their use of the courts—obscuring the issue so they could presumably continue force-fitting meters, distracting ministers and regulators from what enabled them.
In the wake of the 2023 scandal, Ofgem, the UK’s energy regulator, also launched a formal investigation. Suppliers were told to review their practices.
In November 2023, Ofgem formally introduced new rules to pause all involuntary prepayment meter installations.
By April 2024, more than 150,000 cases had been reviewed. But only 1,502 customers had received compensation from the energy companies responsible. The total payout was £342,450.
That works out to just £228 per person—barely enough to cover a couple months of heating (depending on the season and home), let alone compensate for the trauma, fear, or financial pressure of living without reliable access to power.
Room For Future Abuse
Beyond “load control,” the Energy Act 2023 grants the government and energy suppliers sweeping new powers under the banner of energy reform.
Specifically, Section 241 outlined enforcement provisions that paved the way for tighter regulation of smart appliances and household energy systems.
These rules, framed as “smart energy regulations,” now govern how homes and businesses use connected devices.
But more critically, they empowered authorities to demand information, inspect properties, seize equipment, and enter homes using “reasonable force”—so long as they obtain a warrant from a magistrate or sheriff.
Enforcers can compel the handover of personal digital data, request sample appliances for testing, and issue compliance notices that restrict the use, sale, or even the design of smart devices.
The government insists these powers are necessary to ensure the safety, security, and efficiency of Britain’s evolving energy system.
But critics are already sounding the alarm—warning that the language is too broad, as is so characteristic of modern-day legislation.
Yes, warrants are required.
However, after the force-fitting scandal—where magistrates signed off more than a thousand warrants a day without proper oversight—what confidence can we have that these checks will be meaningful?
If the legal system was weaponised once, why should we believe it won’t be again?
Even Ofgem’s response to the scandal showed cracks.
Their 2023 ban on forced prepayment meters only applies to customers over-75 and those classified as “vulnerable.” So it seems many outside this “vulnerable” cohort remain exposed.
Prepayment meters, Ofgem also said, can still be installed as a “last resort” if a customer fails to agree payment terms with a supplier.
In Britain, it's a legal requirement to have properly installed and approved electricity and gas meters if you're connected to the national utility networks.
When your old meter is declared expired and you refuse a smart meter as a replacement, you could technically face a fine—or even jail time.
So the real question isn’t necessarily whether the powers in the Energy Act could be abused—it’s whether we’ve learned anything from how easily O’Shea and Centrica bent the rules before.
Because now, he appears to be doing it again—this time by claiming he’s all out of traditional or “dumb” meters.
If the same legal system stands ready to approve whatever comes next, what’s to stop history repeating?
A space to watch…
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Excellent article there's also plans to use Smart Meter data to automatically calculate your Energy Performance Certificate, as I covered here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/epc-stick-to-beat-us-energy-performance-certficates?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
That moustache tells me he’s clearly a fake, no one has a silent movie villain’s moustache in real life