Gas and Electric Meter Relocation: UK Guide

Click to enlarge

Builders don't tell you about meter relocation. It's not exciting, it doesn't move bricks, and it looks like someone else's problem. So most homeowners find out about the 6-12 week lead time after groundwork has already started, which is precisely the wrong moment to discover it.

The gas and electric meters in your current kitchen or utility room will almost certainly need to move. The new extension footprint usually swallows the original external wall where they sit. Moving them isn't complicated. But each utility involves a network operator and a supplier's meter operator, working to their own schedules and charging their own rates, neither able to be hurried regardless of your build programme. Sequencing those two visits, and getting the trench dug in between, falls to you. The only lever you have is time. Use it early or lose it.

On one documented build, the gas service alteration was quoted at £808.80 and the electricity service alteration cost £1,020.71. Neither of those is a meter charge: they are what the networks charged to move the pipe and the cable. Moving the meters themselves was a separate visit arranged through the energy suppliers, and no charge for it appears anywhere in the invoices. The gas job never ran as booked. A leak was found while the service trenches were being dug, the network attended the same day, and that emergency visit carried out the reroute the scheduled works had been booked to do. The scheduled works were cancelled and refunded, and the gas network charge actually paid was £856.67. Not because anyone was careless, exactly. Because the coordination of these things is harder than it looks, and nobody sets out the sequence upfront.

Gas Meter Relocation: The Process and What It Costs

Start with gas, because the process is less obvious.

Your energy supplier cannot deliver a major gas relocation on its own. They own the meter and the meter box, but they don't own the pipe in the ground. For any move greater than about one metre, you need to contact your Gas Distribution Network (GDN) as well as your supplier. The GDN owns the service pipe that runs from the gas main in the street into your property, and it is the only party allowed to reroute that pipe. The meter on the end of it stays the supplier's, and only they can move it, through the meter operator (a Meter Asset Manager) they engage. That is a second appointment with its own booking, so you need a job open with both parties and ideally the two visits on the same day. Nobody lines those visits up for you. That third job is yours.

The four GDNs in England are:

• Cadent (North West, Midlands, East Anglia, North London)
• Northern Gas Networks (North East and Yorkshire)
• SGN (Southern Gas Networks) (South and South East England, Scotland)
• Wales & West Utilities (South West England and Wales)

Call your energy supplier first. They'll redirect you to the right GDN, and you need a job open with them for the meter itself regardless. Or check Cadent's and SGN's websites directly if you already know your region.

What it costs

SGN's published rates for a standard domestic gas service alteration in Southern England (outside the M25) are £1,031 if SGN digs the trench, or £718 if you dig the trench yourself on your own private land. SGN's published alteration charges cover the pipe only and exclude any meter work, which is billed separately: SGN lists a meter refit charge of £132 where the meter itself needs repositioning. The SGN quote on one documented build came to £808.80 for the service alteration alone. That figure is consistent with a standard alteration in their South East territory. It is not what was paid in the end, though: that quote was later cancelled and refunded after an emergency callout did the same reroute, which is covered further down.

Cadent uses a standing charge plus a per-metre charge. In 2025, the East Midlands standing charge was £815, with £167 per metre of pipe. A seven-metre alteration in the East Midlands works out at roughly £1,982 if Cadent digs. If you dig your own trench on private land, Cadent reduces the standing charge by 70%, which is a meaningful saving on longer runs.

The physical work takes one to two days. The waiting is the problem.

SGN's published lead time is "normally between 6-12 weeks" from payment to works completion. Cadent says "on average, 6-8 weeks from payment." Neither figure includes the time it takes to get the quote, review it, and pay. The realistic elapsed time from your first contact to works complete is 10-14 weeks.

Who digs the trench?

This is where things get complicated, and where builds stall.

The GDN needs a clear service trench from the gas main connection point to the new meter position before they'll lay new pipework. Either they dig it, or you do. If you dig it yourself (or your groundwork contractor does), you save money. But you also take on responsibility for coordinating the excavation to be complete and ready when the GDN team shows up.

In my build, the original main contractor agreed to dig the service trenches. He never did. I ended up engaging a separate groundwork contractor eight months later to dig service trenches, install drainage, and handle the soakaway. That job cost £3,250, though it covered drainage work too, not just the meter trench. Some of that was directly tied to the meter relocation; some covered drainage work the original contractor had also failed to arrange. The point is: if the trench isn't dug when the GDN arrives, they leave. You go back to the end of the queue.

Get trench responsibility confirmed in writing before you book the GDN. If your builder agrees to dig the trench, write it into the scope of work with a specific completion date. Don't assume.

Click to enlarge

Electric Meter Relocation: The DNO Process

Electricity works differently from gas at the infrastructure level, but the homeowner experience is almost identical: wrong first contact, redirect, long wait.

Your energy supplier owns the electricity meter. But the cable feeding the meter from the street is owned by your Distribution Network Operator (DNO). The DNOs in England include National Grid Electricity Distribution (covering the Midlands, South West, Wales and East of England), UK Power Networks (South East, London, East Anglia), Electricity North West, Northern Powergrid, and SSEN (parts of South England and Scotland).

For any move of more than one metre, you contact your DNO directly as well as your supplier. The DNO reroutes the service cable and bills you for that work. Your supplier's meter operator moves the meter sitting on the end of it, as a separate appointment. Booking both and getting them in the right order is your job, not theirs.

The process runs: apply online to your DNO, receive a quote within five working days, accept and pay, a project manager contacts you within ten working days, works are scheduled. You must also arrange for an electrician to attend on the same day as the DNO, because the DNO reconnects the incoming supply cable but your electrician must handle the internal consumer unit reconnection.

On one documented build, the SSEN invoice for the electricity supply alteration came in at £1,020.71. SSEN's published 2026 base rates for a standard extended underground alteration in South England start at around £546. The documented cost was higher, reflecting a longer cable run and the complexity of the supply alteration involved. Extended alterations requiring new cable runs regularly exceed the base published rates.

When to Start This Process

The right time to initiate both applications is at the pre-construction stage, before groundwork begins. In practice, this means once planning permission is granted and you have a confirmed builder start date. The utility meter relocation task guide shows where this sits in the pre-construction sequence, alongside drainage and site setup.

Build your meter relocation timeline backwards. If groundwork starts in October, you need the meters moved before the external walls go up (because the new meter positions will be on those walls). That means works complete by, say, September. That means you need to have paid and booked by late July to allow for the 6-8 week window the networks quote from payment. That means quotes accepted in mid-July. That means you need to have contacted both the GDN and DNO in June or earlier.

Most homeowners contact them in September, when groundwork has already started.

Click to enlarge

Initiate contact with your GDN and DNO at the same time you submit your building control application. You don't need final drawings. You need enough information to describe where the meter is now and where it needs to go.

What Happens When a Gas Pipe Gets Struck

This part doesn't appear in any guide to utility costs, but it should.

During groundwork on my extension, a gas leak was found while the service trenches were being dug. My groundwork contractor smelled gas and called it in, and SGN attended the same day. SGN attributed the leak to the excavation and took the builder's details. Whether it pre-dated the digging was never established. The emergency number is 0800 111 999. SGN sends an emergency crew, they isolate and repair the pipe.

It happened during the same trenching exercise that was supposed to prepare the ground for the meter relocation, and that is what changed the bill. The emergency crew rerouted the gas supply to its new position, which is exactly the job the scheduled alteration had been booked to do. The scheduled works were cancelled that same day, the £808.80 already paid in June 2022 was refunded, and the emergency reroute was charged at £856.67 when the invoice landed in January 2023.

So the gas network was paid £856.67 in total on that build, not that plus the original quote. Two things are worth taking from it. The quote is not necessarily the amount you end up paying, and an excavation find can pull the network's work forward whether you planned it that way or not. Here the emergency brought SGN to site sooner than the booked slot would have, which was the one part of the episode that helped.

Under Pipelines Safety Regulations 1996 Regulation 15, causing damage to a pipeline that creates a dangerous situation is a criminal offence. The liability sits with the contractor whose excavation caused the strike. The GDN (SGN in this case) will recharge all repair and emergency response costs. Your contractor's public liability insurance should cover it, but confirm this explicitly before they dig. The HSE has prosecuted contractors for striking gas pipes on domestic projects and continuing to work afterwards.

The precaution is simple and often skipped: before any mechanical excavation within 500mm of a marked gas service pipe, switch to hand digging. The network operator will provide maps of their services free of charge. Get them. Give them to your groundwork contractor before they start.

The Full Cost Picture

The headline network charges (gas and electric service alterations) are around £1,800-£2,300 for a typical domestic extension. That is what the networks charge to move the pipe and the cable. The meter move itself is a separate line, billed by your supplier, and on short moves it is sometimes free. But the real cost of poor coordination is higher than any of it.

On one documented build, the complete utility-related cost broke down like this:

• Gas service alteration (SGN): £856.67, charged as an emergency reroute after the leak was found in the trench. The scheduled job had been quoted at £808.80 and was cancelled and refunded, so this is one charge and not two
• Electricity service alteration (SSEN): £1,020.71
• Moving the meters themselves (energy suppliers): no charge on this build
• Groundwork contractor for service trenches (bundled with drainage): £3,250.00

That last figure covered more than meter-related work: drainage and a soakaway that the main contractor never delivered. But the engagement would have been smaller or unnecessary if the service trenches had been dug as agreed eight months earlier.

Utility coordination done badly isn't just an inconvenience. It's several thousand pounds you hadn't budgeted for.

Meter Relocation Action Plan

Use this sequence for every extension:

1. Identify your GDN and DNO. Check your gas bill for the network operator, or use the Cadent/SGN postcode lookup. Check your electricity bill for the DNO, or use the Energy Networks Association postcode checker.

2. Contact both simultaneously. Don't do gas first and electricity second. Both have similar lead times. Start them in parallel.

Click to enlarge

3. Get written quotes. GDNs and DNOs provide written quotes before you pay. Read them. Specifically check: does the quote include trench digging, or is that your responsibility?

4. Confirm trench responsibility in your builder's scope. If the trench is the builder's job, write it into the contract with a completion date before the GDN/DNO arrival. Do not accept a verbal agreement.

5. Pay and book before groundwork starts. Not during. Not after. Before.

6. Get utility service maps before any excavation. Call your GDN and request maps of all gas services in the area before groundwork begins. Give them to your groundwork contractor. Require hand digging within 500mm of any marked service.

7. Confirm your contractor's PL insurance covers excavation work. Do this before the digger arrives on site.

The process isn't difficult. The lead times are what catch people. Start early, confirm responsibilities in writing, and the meter relocation will happen in the background while you're dealing with everything else on your pre-construction list.

Meter relocation is one of several long-lead items that need starting months before anyone digs. The complete kitchen extension timeline shows where each of them falls against the rest of the build.