New utility billing system to save household consumers up to €8 per year

Updated at 5:03pm with PN reaction

Most households could see savings of up to €8 in their next utility bill after changes to the law regulating the billing process come into force.

The legal changes, announced today, will ensure residential and domestic users will be able to benefit fully from the units allocated to the individual tariff bands.

The new billing rules will apply retrospectively to 1 January 2022 and consumers will have their next bill adjusted to reflect this change.

The new system will ensure that any unutilised units in the individual bands will be reflected in monetary terms in the subsequent bill. Today these units are lost.

Bills will continue being issued every two months with consumers being able to see the relevant adjustment in their invoice.

The eco-reduction mechanism will continue being applied as it is today.

ARMS CEO Silvio Scerri said the change will correct an anomaly created in the 2009 legal notice that determined how bills are calculated every two months.

He insisted that ARMS always followed the law when billing customers over the years. Scerri said the company was appealing a recent court judgment that awarded two consumers compensation as a result of the way their household bills were calculated.

Energy Minister Miriam Dalli said under the new billing system just over 80% of household consumers would experience positive adjustments of up to €8 per year.

“In this way consumers would not be losing any unutilised units but we also took care not to change the eco-reduction mechanism, which will continue being computed every two months, since doing so would have meant consumers losing out,” she said.

Dalli ruled out compensation to consumers for past bills, something which the Nationalist Party has pledged to do.

“ARMS always billed consumers according to the 2009 legal notice, which contained inconsistencies and discrepancies between the English and Maltese versions. If this was a question of wrong billing, we would not have had to change the law but simply adjust the mechanism,” she replied.

When it was pointed out that the court ruled in favour of compensation since it found that the billing mechanism did not reflect the law, Dalli said ARMS was appealing the decision. “What we are announcing today is independent of any court judgment,” she added.

She insisted that annualising bills like the PN was calling for without giving due consideration to the bi-monthly computation of the eco-reduction mechanism would have resulted in consumers losing their subsidy.

The new mechanism does not apply to businesses with Dalli saying that they would lose out if the system applies also to them.

A couple of weeks ago, PN leader Bernard Grech announced the party would be fronting a class action suit against ARMS to ensure consumers are refunded the money they were overcharged.

READ ALSO: How energy consumption near tariff band is costing households more

Let down for PN after minister rules out compensation

The Nationalist Party has been vindicated over its stand on overbilling but is disappointed that consumers will not be compensated for past bills, the party said on Thursday.

Reacting to minister Dalli's statement in which she ruled out compensation, the PN said the only hope people had was of joining its class suit action.

"Minister Miriam Dalli confirmed what the Nationalist Party has been saying for ages about the system of electricity and water bills robbing people," the PN said, adding that a court ruling last July decreed that the billing system used since 2014 went against the legal notice.

"The only remedy that people have is to go to court. We will be giving the opportunity to all those people that have been robbed to take part in a class action and get their money back. We will cover all the legal expenses," the party said.