Last April the Chancellor and other ministers boldly promised a £400 support package to help struggling families going to "every household". 

The Press widely reported that these payments would be automatically made, but this was not accurate. Only households with a direct relationship with an electricity supplier started receiving their £400 rebate payments in October. 

My company alone serves over 3,000 households who have yet not received any money as they use electricity sub-meters, and so their payments are channelled through their landlords.

When the BEIS (Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) designed the rebate procedures they recognised that their proposals would exclude "up to 400,000" households. 

I have met with the BEIS, and as a result they have added half a million extra households, so the latest official estimate is that 900,00 households have missed out.  These being the poorest households in the UK. 

Deadlines have come and gone in announcing details of this "EBSS Additional Funding" to give these households equivalent support.  What little has been published about the proposed application process raises many concerns, including:

• applications have to be made proactively by excluded households, but so far there has been no publicity. Many households are not going to know that they have to apply.  I have suggested to the BEIS how these households could easily be identified;
• the government has delegated the vetting of applications to Local Authorities, who are unlikely to have the additional resources needed.  The criteria for eligibility is still vague;

The government pledged that these households would "not be worse off" - this looks like a hollow promise.

It now cold, and these households desperately need these funds to pay for their heat and light - but all the signs are that hundreds of thousands will miss out on their payments, and it will be a long time before any money is actually distributed.

Even worse, these tenants are not covered by the Energy Pricing Cap.  They typically have to pay far higher costs per kWh as they are supplied under commercial contracts. 

The government's "Energy Bill Relief Scheme" is wrongly described by them as "for businesses and other non domestic customers" as it covers more than a million households, probably several million.  But even its more limited support is due to be reduced in March. 

Ofgem released guidance on this "inappropriate misclassification" in 2015.  But this has been ignored.

I am not aware of any proposals to extend extra Energy Bill Relief Scheme protection to these households whom the government has chosen to unfairly doubly prejudice: missing them out from the EBSS £400 scheme as well as their domestic pricing cap funding.

Please sign this petition, and circulate it.  Write to your MP.  This issue urgently needs to be drawn to the government and public's attention.  Nationally, only the Mirror has so far reported on this scandal.

Gary Wernick

(If you want further information then please read Government Documentation Supporting My Claims).

Click to hear a report on this and an interview that I gave on BBC Radio Solent on 19th August