A FAMILY has been left in the cold with a £650 bill when their boiler broke down following the installation of a smart meter intended to help them save money.

Daniel Bee, who has an eight-week old son and two-year-old daughter, says he lost central heating for a week after E.ON installed the meter at his Old Town home.

He claims that the engineer who came to fit the technology switched off the gas. But when he tried to turn the boiler on again it didn't work and he told Daniel he couldn't work on it as he wasn’t qualified as a gas contractor.

“It was almost a week and my children and partner had had to live in a freezing cold home without heating and hot water. It’s been really concerning. I’m sure they have some kind of duty of care, especially with children under five.”

The family insisted the nine-month-old boiler was working fine before the meter was installed. The engineer served them with a warning notice that he couldn’t get the gas back on. A second engineer from E.ON came later that evening and still could not inspect the boiler to fix it.

“The first one said unfortunately he couldn’t touch the boiler,” added Daniel’s partner Laura McKie. “Then the second one said she wasn’t allowed to open the boiler either. I don’t understand why they would send another person and yet do nothing about it. Now my kids are full of colds. Even my partner has a cold while he’s working 12-hour shifts just to pay for the boiler. He’s on his third 12-hour shift and hasn’t seen his daughter for two days.”

The family called a gas engineer from the boiler’s manufacturer the next day to come out and were told components on the programming board had gone, although they could not be sure of the cause.

When Daniel asked E.ON to pay the repair bill the company refused. “How are we meant to afford £650 for fixing our boiler with two young children under five, at Christmas with one wage coming in,” Daniel added.

“I don’t want compensation or anything, we just wanted our boiler fixed and to give my children a warm home.”

An E.ON spokesperson said: “Our smart meter technicians hold Gas Safe and Meter Asset Manager Code of Practice accreditations and we have robust processes in place to ensure the effective selection, training and management of our gas installation technicians.

“Our engineer successfully reconnected gas and electricity supply to Mr Bee’s house after his meter exchange. Mr Bee contacted us to say that his boiler was broken because of the meter exchange so we sent an emergency engineer out, who reconfirmed that the gas and electricity supply and meters were working correctly. We told Mr Bee that the issue was with his boiler and he would need a gas-safe boiler technician to service or replace it.”