Dean Kirby
The Prepayment Meter Scandal, The i paper
Dean Kirby is The i paper’s Investigations Correspondent. He has been reporting the news for 25 years. His awards include the Medical Journalists’ Association News Story of the Year for an investigation into PPE supply chain chaos in the Covid pandemic. He has been highly commended for the 2022 Hugh Cudlipp Award for Investigative Journalism and shortlisted for scoop of the year at the British Journalism Awards for his work on the war in Ukraine. His investigation The Prepayment Meter Scandal exposed the national scandal of how debt agents acting for energy firms were using court warrants to break into homes to forcibly fit prepayment meters that leave the poorest families in the cold and dark.
His shortlisted pieces are:
- National scandal of forced installation of prepayment meters
- Prepay meter scandal grows: 99.99% of court warrants are waved through
- Inside the courtroom where it takes minutes to force hundreds of people onto prepayment meters
- Magistrates granting energy firms prepayment meter warrants in ‘private back rooms’ at court
- Prepayment meters: ‘It was so cold my daughter had an asthma attack, but I can’t afford to heat our home’
- Do not give energy firms the right to force entry over prepay meters, courts told
