Why this matters

For most households, energy is not a debate about turbines or policy. It is the cost of heating your home, the size of your bill, and the feeling that there is little room to question the terms attached to it.

This page focuses on the everyday side of energy: supply, billing, and the basis on which contracts and charges are treated as applying to domestic premises in Shetland.

Deemed and standard arrangements

Many households are supplied under standard terms or deemed arrangements — frameworks that can apply automatically, without any direct negotiation. In practice, that can mean people find themselves treated as bound by terms they have never actively agreed to.

This is not unusual across the UK energy system. However, when arrangements are automatic, clarity becomes more important, not less. A system that applies terms by default should be able to explain the basis on which it does so.

The basic questions

Shetland First is asking a straightforward set of questions that any householder is entitled to understand:

• Standing: on what legal basis does a supplier assert standing to supply electricity to domestic premises in Shetland?
• Geographic scope: what licence or authority is relied upon, and how is its applicability to Shetland demonstrated?
• Contractual basis: where supply is treated as “deemed”, what provision is relied upon and what conditions trigger it?
• Billing and enforcement: on what basis are charges calculated, demanded, and (if ever asserted) enforced?
• Metering reliance: who is said to own the meter, and what authority makes its readings determinative for billing?

Asking these questions is not hostility to supply. It is a request for clarity about arrangements that affect every household.

What Shetland First is doing

Shetland First is examining household energy arrangements in a careful and responsible way. That includes making private, formal enquiries to electricity suppliers seeking clarification of the points above.

This work is not a refusal of supply, does not encourage non-payment, and does not interfere with continuity of service. It is an attempt to bring transparency to a system that many people experience as automatic and unchallengeable.

If the basis for these arrangements is sound, it should be capable of being clearly set out. If it cannot be clearly set out, that too is something people are entitled to understand.

How this connects to the wider Energy work

Household bills do not exist in isolation. Prices, terms, and long-term dependency are shaped by wider energy decisions — including large infrastructure projects and market structures that are rarely discussed in everyday language.

If you are interested in the wider picture, see Energy (Land) and Energy (Sea & Seabed).