Recalculation without applications: how the government is changing the rules for paying utility bills after winter outages

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The Cabinet of Ministers has adopted a resolution that changes the approach to calculating utility payments in situations where services were not actually provided or were provided with violations. It concerns automatic recalculation of payments for heating, water supply, and waste removal without applications from consumers. The decision was prepared by the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development, taking into account the consequences of massive shelling, in particular in January 2026, and is applied from January 1, 2026.

The key change is that responsibility for recording non-provided or poor-quality services is placed on service providers, not on residents. Utility companies are required to record, for each apartment building, the number of days when services were absent or provided with violations. For these days, payment is not charged, and the total cost of services is subject to recalculation for the entire period of non-provision or improper provision. A fundamental point is that the results of the recalculation will be automatically reflected in the bills of the following month. Consumers do not need to submit applications, collect certificates, or prove the fact of the absence of heating or water. The state effectively recognizes that in wartime conditions shifting the administrative burden onto people who have experienced shelling and prolonged outages is unfair. The resolution places particular emphasis on periods of liquidation of the consequences of shelling and accidents. If services were not provided precisely for these reasons, charges are not applied at all. This is an important signal for cities that experienced massive disruptions to heating and water supply during the winter.

At the same time, the new rules are imposed on a system that has its own technical limitations. In Kyiv, buildings with heat meters pay for actually consumed gigacalories, while buildings without meters are charged based on thermal load, taking into account temperature and hours of heat supply. During emergency power outages, the system often works in such a way that short-term interruptions provide almost no savings, since after power restoration buildings “recover” heat consumption. That is why automatic recalculation becomes critically important in cases of long shutdowns, when the service was absent for weeks. For buildings with independent heating systems, charges are calculated based on data from electricity distribution operators. In such cases, residents or building managers can still initiate adjustments by providing information about the heating scheme and actual hours of power outages, but the basic principle of recalculation remains the same pay only for the service that was actually provided.

Against the background of this resolution, the situation in Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district looks particularly acute. Due to attacks on energy infrastructure, hundreds of apartment buildings were left without heating, effectively an entire district with a population comparable to a regional center. In an interview with Delo.ua, the head of the district, Maksym Bakhmatov, directly speaks about the lack of reserve solutions, budget centralization at the city level, and the inability of district authorities to influence strategic decisions. According to him, avoiding the crisis under conditions of strikes on CHP plants was impossible, but over the years of war it would have been possible to create a decentralized alternative, which never appeared. Nevertheless, even in this critical situation, the resolution on recalculating bills performs an important function. It reduces social tension and fixes the responsibility of service providers for the quality and continuity of supply. For people who endured a winter without heating, this does not solve the heating problem, but it provides a clear understanding that the state does not force them to pay for something that did not exist.

In a broader perspective, this decision highlights a deeper problem. A correct bill does not replace heat in an apartment, and automatic recalculation does not compensate for the lack of strategic planning in the energy sector of large cities. Without investments in reserve and distributed generation, such resolutions will continue to operate in a mode of responding to consequences rather than preventing crises. Recalculation of utility payments is a necessary step toward fairness for consumers. But at the same time, it is a reminder that a bill can only be correct when the system is capable of providing the service itself. Without this, even the clearest charging rules will remain only financial compensation for systemic failures.