By JASON LEWIS

Last updated at 23:59 15 December 2007

One of Britain's biggest electricity companies mistakenly broke into a woman's home to change her meter even though she was not a customer.

The case puts the spotlight on little-known laws that give hundreds of organisations special powers to invade homes.

Electricity giant E.ON applied for a warrant to forcibly enter Anna Tonkin's 18th-Century cottage in Bunwell, Norfolk.

They persuaded a magistrate to issue a court order which allowed them to pick her locks and let themselves into her home.

They mistakenly believed Ms Tonkin and her husband Mike Dongelmans were behind with their payments and used locksmiths to open their front door and install a pre-payment meter to control their electricity supply.

But Ms Tonkin, an osteopath, was not a E.ON customer. Her electricity was supplied by British Gas.

Scroll down for more...

E.ON should have sent contractors from Siemens Energy Services to enter the home of another customer in the same area, but used the wrong address when it applied for the court order.

Ms Tonkin did not discover what had happened until weeks later when she noticed a new meter in her understairs cupboard.

She said: "Knowing that someone has been in your house without you being aware and then finding out later is really creepy. You are left wondering who the people were and what they looked at. I was very surprised to find out they had the power to get into a house perfectly legally."

The electricity company has now apologised and paid the couple around £500 compensation. E.ON said: "This was a genuine error for which we apologise unreservedly.

"However, in some cases we have to take this kind of enforcement action. It is only done as a matter of last resort."

Siemens said that in about 35,000 cases a year it visited householders over payment issues. "In the vast majority of these cases the matter is resolved. However, in some the decision is made to apply to a magistrate for a right-of-access warrant."

A Private Member's Bill currently being discussed in the House of Lords reveals that there are 266 powers on the statute book that allow people to enter private homes.

The powers have grown up piecemeal from EU directives and regulations. They allow the use of force and some carry draconian penalties for obstruction, including heavy fines and up to two years in jail.

The Powers of Entry Bill proposed by Tory peer Lord Selsdon seeks to restrict the powers to law-enforcement agencies and to tightly control the circumstances in which the powers can be used by other organisations.