AN ENERGY company had to apologise after a retired midwife was left paying a neighbouring family’s high bills over several years due to a crossed meter and Salisbury-based daughter Semra Kurutacwho said, “the bills got up to just over £400 a month.”

Judith Stenner, 72, from Manchester had tried to resolve the situation but was told by Scottish Power that she was a “high-energy user”. This led to her trying to reduce her energy usage - including rarely cooking at home and turning her heating off during the winter months.

Daughter Semra Kurutac who teaches piano said it had been a “a little bit of a whirlwind” since her mother’s case was raised in Parliament.

She added: “Mum’s had electricians round to check her appliances in her flat, she’s even gone and got a new immersion heater installed that we now know was completely unnecessary.

“But in the winter months her bills last year got up to just over £400-a-month and we calculated – we’ve been taking readings ever since we got involved in April – that her bills, including standing charge, shouldn’t be much more than £80-a-month based on her current usage.”

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Mrs Stenner said she went into a “numb phase that nobody is believing you and nobody is listening” as she struggled to resolve the issue, but bills kept increasing despite becoming a “bit obsessive about switching everything off all the time”.

The case was raised in the House of Commons by Labour’s Afzal Khan who is the MP for Manchester Gorton who insisted that no vulnerable person should be going to bed cold at night.

MPs heard that the breast cancer survivor had been paying the energy bills of a family-of-four next door for much of the six years she had lived in the flat and Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt condemned the “appalling situation.”

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Mrs Stenner said: “I’ve gone past crying, I’ve gone past shouting, you just go into a numb phase that nobody is believing you and nobody is listening, what am I going to do.

“But fortunately, which I should have done sooner, once my daughter was involved with her partner, they just took things in hand and that’s where we are today.”

She said it felt as though a “weight has gone off my shoulders.”

It took 14 weeks for the necessary changes to be made and ScottishPower have apologised for the “issues and distress” experienced by Ms Stenner, adding it was “unacceptable and falls far below the level of service we aim to provide”.