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Receiverships Act 1993

40: Refusal to supply essential services prohibited

You could also call this:

"Suppliers must keep providing important services like power and water, even if someone hasn't paid before."

Illustration for Receiverships Act 1993

If you are a supplier of essential services like gas, electricity, water, or telecommunications, you must keep supplying these services. You cannot refuse to supply these services to someone just because they have not paid for them before. Essential services are things you need to live and work, like electricity to power your home or water to drink. Telecommunications services include things like phone and internet. You also cannot make someone pay for services they used before a receiver was appointed as a condition of keeping the services on.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM327771.

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40Refusal to supply essential services prohibited

  1. For the purposes of this section, an essential service means—

  2. the retail supply of gas:
    1. the retail supply of electricity:
      1. the supply of water:
        1. telecommunications services.

          1. For the purposes of this section, telecommunications services means the conveyance from one device to another by any line, radio frequency or other medium of any sign, signal, impulse, writing, image, sound, instruction, information, or intelligence of any nature, whether or not for the information of a person using the device.

          2. Notwithstanding the provisions of any other Act or any contract, a supplier of an essential service must not—

          3. refuse to supply the service to a receiver or to the owner of property in receivership by reason of the grantor's default in paying charges due for the service in relation to a period before the date of the appointment of the receiver; or
            1. make it a condition of the further supply of the service to a receiver or to the owner of property in receivership that payment be made of outstanding charges due for the service in relation to a period before the date of the appointment of the receiver; or

                Notes
                • Section 40(3)(c): repealed, on , by section 5 of the Receiverships Amendment Act 1994 (1994 No 14).