Can a landlord dictate who you have your gas and electricity supply from?

[Fizzylemonade]

My Mum rents a property and wants to change her gas from British Gas to her current electricity supplier.

It states in her tenancy agreement that she has to get the landlord's permission to change supplier and then she has to provide the property number to him. It is all managed through an agent and the landlord has been fantastic about everything from a broken back door lock to gas servicing etc so she cannot see him refusing.

My question is can a landlord by law dictate who you have your gas and electricity from?

My lovely Mum is a pensioner and wants to cap her bills now that EDF energy have just hiked their prices considerably and everyone else will follow suit. To make life easier she wants to have dual fuel from her electricity provider and cap the bill.

Our contract says exactly the same thing - so I imagine that it's a fairly standard clause nowadays. It also says that the landlord can't unreasonably refuse a request to change supplier. If the landlord has been fine so far, then I'm sure that your Mum won't have any problems.

Yes, a landlord can - we changed our suppliers in a rented flat a few years back, had no end of hassle, and had to explain the situation to our landlord when we moved out. He said he'd introduced a 'no change' clause into all his leases just after we moved in, because all his tenants had had similar problems.

However if you ask nicely and are moving to one rather than two suppliers, I would expect most landlords to agree as long as you agreed to deal with any problems and didn't have any arrears when you left (with my landlord hat on!)