Who is responsible for moving meter cables?

I cannot see an earth lead in this photo. A earth wire would usually be solid green or green/yellow. The earth wire does not usually connect to the meter, just the live and neutral do. The earth connection just goes to the conusmer side sockets etc. On that basis not sure why OVO need an earth connection moved unless there is a wire/connector next to the meter preventing insillation.

I was shown by the OVO engineer that the brown cable is the earth. He said that in order to install the new smart meter this has to be moved to the other side where there is a similar black box. He said that if he was to install the meter with this in the current position it would mean breaking the earth and would mean that house would be live. He issued me with a safety warning notice detailing that. 

The brown cable is not an earth but I think they may have been talking about the box labelled ‘NE’ 

you can see an earth (yellow/green) cable coming out of the top which seems to indicate the incoming neutral being used as an earth (fairly common).

If anything is in the way of a replacement meter install, I would have thought it to be the live cables in the light coloured box above the NE connection 

That has the brown live feed from the meter so could (in my view) be moved by the meter installer

Hey @Flora48, 

I’ve tagged one of our engineers @Lukepeniket_OVO as they might be able to offer some insight into what’s required! It looks like we have a few other volunteers who’ve given up some time to help get to the bottom of this for you. 

Could you post a couple more photographs of the setup if possible, so we can see it from different perspectives? Sometimes it’s hard to give advice based on the first photo we see 😊

I just had a call from OVO telling me they have filled in a form for the energy network. I’m assuming SSEN to remove above seal. I asked who has going to move the earth which I was told by the OVO engineer is the brown cable on the right hand side but the OVO agent did not understand me. I’m confused as to why SSEN needs to remove this seal when it must have been SSE that put it in 

That’s brilliant thank you for your help 

Hey @Flora48, 

Thanks for uploading these and to @BPLightlog for the advice! Please keep us updated on getting this resolved 🙂

Here is a follow up to this situation. OVO asked SSEN to look at the cables which they did. SSEN said this “team attended and there is no defect on our side, our engineers reported 'there is an earth block issue but on metering side so not for us to touch'.  By our licence conditions we are not allowed to work on metering equipment, likewise metering are authorised to pull fuses on our equipment but can't do any other work.”

However yesterday my smart meter installation which I require to fix the problem created by OVO previously which has caused my economy 7 to stop working was cancelled. When I phoned to enquire why I was told repeatedly by an OVO operator that “ you have to move the earth cable because we can’t install a smart meter until then”

I then contacted SSEN who replied with the above at the same time SSEN (again) copied the response to OVO. I should mention that when the cancelled smart meter was booked the previous response from SSEN was attached to my account and the operator agreed that the job could be done!  Because my economy 7 is no longer working due to an OVO key overwrite it’s now costing me £2.50 to heat up the hot water heater manual for one hour and the water isn’t even very hot! 
 

I have been waiting since early October to have this fixed but now OVO will not book it. I have raised a complaint (again)
 

I’m sorry to hear you’ve had to raise another complaint ​@Flora48. If you don’t get an adequate resolution from the complaints team there is the option to escalate the complaint. You can find out more here.