The Heat Act: Your Rights Explained

The Heat Act (Warmtewet) gives everyone connected to a Dutch heat network a set of statutory rights that the supplier cannot contract away: a price capped by the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), reliable supply on reasonable terms, financial compensation for a serious interruption, protection against being cut off during the winter months, and access to an independent disputes committee. Those rights apply to consumers and to small business users with a connection of no more than 100 kW, precisely because such users cannot switch supplier. This article sets out what the protection covers and how to invoke it.

Why the Heat Act exists

Heat networks work differently from the electricity and gas markets. A household or office connected to a district heating system is connected to one physical network, operated by one company, and there is no competitor to switch to. The connection is often not a free choice either: municipalities designate districts for heat, new-build homes are frequently delivered without a gas connection, and a landlord may have signed up an entire building. That absence of choice is the reason the legislator regulates the relationship instead of leaving it to the market.

The framework consists of three layers. The Heat Act itself contains the rights and duties, the Heat Decree (Warmtebesluit) works out the tariff structure and the metering rules, and the Heat Regulation (Warmteregeling) fills in the detail, including the compensation amounts for interruptions and the position of vulnerable consumers. The ACM supervises compliance and sets the maximum price each year. If you want the wider background to the system, our article on district heating and the Warmtewet in the Netherlands covers how the market is organised, and our article on the disadvantages of district heating networks explains where the system falls short for users.

Who is protected

The Heat Act protects the verbruiker: a person or business that takes heat through a connection with a capacity of no more than 100 kilowatts. That threshold, rather than the distinction between private and commercial, decides whether the statutory protection applies. A shop, a dental practice or a small office with an ordinary connection therefore has the same tariff protection and the same right to compensation as a household. Large industrial users above the threshold negotiate their own contracts and fall outside the regime.

Tenants are a special case, and this is where most misunderstandings arise. Article 1a of the Heat Act takes heat supplied by a landlord to a tenant of a rented home, and heat supplied by an owners association (Vereniging van Eigenaars) to its members, outside the scope of the Act. Communal heating within a building (blokverwarming) supplied by the landlord is therefore not covered by the ACM maximum price. What does still apply to those suppliers is the block of provisions on metering, individual heat cost allocation and transparent billing. For the price itself, a residential tenant relies on rent law: heat delivered through the landlord is a service charge, and a tenant who considers the charge unreasonable can ask the Rent Tribunal (Huurcommissie) to assess it. Identifying which of the two routes applies to your building is the first thing to check, because it determines both the standard and the forum.

Tariff protection: how the maximum price works

The central protection in the Heat Act is the maximum price. Under article 5 the ACM determines each year the highest tariff a heat supplier may charge, and a supplier that charges more may be held to the maximum, with the excess reclaimable. The maximum has two components: a usage-dependent part per gigajoule of heat actually consumed, and a usage-independent part covering the fixed costs of the connection and the delivery set. Separate maximum amounts apply to items such as the connection charge and the rental of the delivery set.

The method behind the maximum has long been the not-more-than-otherwise principle (niet meer dan anders): the tariff is derived from what a comparable household would pay for the same amount of heat using natural gas. That reference has been criticised for years, because it links the heat bill to a gas price that has nothing to do with the actual cost of the heat network, and because it can leave a supplier with a windfall when gas prices spike. The ACM has been adjusting the method step by step and now applies elements based on the costs of heat companies rather than the gas reference alone. Because the maximum is reset annually and published by the ACM, no figure in an article or a brochure stays accurate for long; always check the tariff decision for the year in question.

The maximum price is a ceiling, not a fixed price. A supplier may charge less, and the tariff you actually pay must follow from your delivery agreement. Two practical checks are worth making every year. First, compare the tariff on your annual statement with the maximum published by the ACM for that year, per component, because a supplier can be within the maximum on the variable tariff and above it on a fixed item. Second, check that you are billed on actual consumption where an individual meter is installed, since the metering and billing rules apply even to suppliers that fall outside the rest of the Act.

Reliable supply, faults and compensation

Article 2 of the Heat Act obliges the supplier to ensure reliable delivery of heat on reasonable terms and with a proper quality of service. That is a genuine legal standard rather than a statement of intent: it underpins claims about repeated outages, lukewarm delivery and poor complaint handling, and it is the provision the ACM relies on when it intervenes.

For interruptions the Act adds a specific remedy. Article 3a entitles a consumer to financial compensation from the supplier in the event of a serious supply failure. The compensation is fixed in the Heat Regulation and rises with the duration of the interruption, in steps, so that a long outage produces a substantially higher amount than a short one. Two points decide most cases. The first is the threshold: an isolated interruption below the statutory duration does not trigger compensation, but the picture changes where the same consumer has suffered earlier failures in the preceding twelve months. The second is force majeure, which a supplier will often invoke and which is interpreted narrowly, since ordinary technical failure, deferred maintenance or a shortage of engineers is a business risk rather than an external event beyond control.

Compensation under article 3a is not the ceiling on your claim. It is a statutory minimum that does not require you to prove loss. If the interruption caused actual damage, for example spoiled stock in a business or the cost of temporary heating, the ordinary rules on breach of contract in Book 6 of the Dutch Civil Code apply alongside it. Report the failure in writing, record the start and end times, and keep the receipts, because the burden of proving the damage rests with you.

When a heat supplier may cut you off

Disconnection is tightly constrained. Article 4 of the Heat Act requires the supplier to prevent disconnection as far as possible, and in particular during the period from 1 October to 1 April. In that winter window a supplier that wants to disconnect a consumer for non-payment must go through the prescribed steps first: a payment reminder, an offer of a payment arrangement, and information about debt assistance, with the supply maintained while the consumer engages with that process. Disconnection without those steps is unlawful and can be reversed.

Vulnerable consumers have an additional layer of protection. The Heat Regulation describes the category of consumers for whom disconnection would create serious health risks, and requires the supplier to take a declaration from a medical practitioner into account before cutting off the supply. If someone in the household depends on heat for health reasons, say so in writing and early, because the protection works only if the supplier has been informed.

Planned interruptions are treated separately from disconnection for non-payment. Maintenance work that takes the network down has to be announced in advance so that users can prepare, and a supplier that carries out planned work without notice exposes itself to the compensation regime and to a complaint at the ACM. In practice, keeping the announcement letters and comparing them with the actual outage times is the simplest way to build a file.

Complaints, the disputes committee and the ACM

The Heat Act provides for low-threshold dispute resolution. Article 3b requires that consumers be able to bring a dispute with their supplier before an independent disputes committee, in a procedure that must be fast, transparent, simple and inexpensive. The route runs in a fixed order: first submit a written complaint to the supplier and give it a reasonable period to respond, then take the matter to the disputes committee if the answer does not satisfy you. Going straight to court is possible but rarely the efficient first move for a consumer claim.

Supervision is a separate track with a different purpose. The ACM enforces the Heat Act in the public interest and can issue a binding instruction, impose an order subject to a penalty payment or impose an administrative fine on a supplier that breaks the rules, with the statutory maxima laid down by law and adjusted over time. The minister can withdraw a supply licence where the holder fails to comply with the licence conditions or with the legislation. What the ACM does not do is award you money: a report to the ACM can change a supplier behaviour across its whole customer base, but your own compensation has to come from the supplier, the disputes committee or the court.

The licence itself is worth understanding, because it tells you who you are dealing with. Under article 9 it is prohibited to supply heat to consumers without an ACM licence, with exceptions for very small suppliers, for those staying below an annual volume threshold, and for the owner or landlord of the building. A licensed supplier is subject to the full regime including reporting duties to the ACM; an exempt one is not, which again affects which route you take.

Getting connected: what the law regulates and what it leaves open

Applying for a heat connection is largely a technical exercise, and the Heat Act says less about it than users expect. The process usually begins with an application to the heat company, which assesses whether a connection is technically and economically feasible and whether the building is suitable, looking at insulation and at the existing heating installation. An installer then inspects the property and draws up a connection plan setting out how the service pipe will be routed and where the delivery set will be placed, after which the applicant receives a quotation covering the connection charge and any alterations needed inside the building.

The physical work has an outdoor and an indoor part. Outdoors, a service pipe is laid from the main network to the building, which normally means excavation in the public road and on private land. Indoors, a heat exchanger and delivery set replace the boiler, existing radiators and underfloor heating can usually be retained, and the system is balanced and pressure-tested before it is handed over. Where a home switches fully to heat, the gas connection is generally removed, which is a decision worth taking deliberately: reinstating a gas connection later is expensive and, in districts designated for heat, not always possible.

The legally significant point is what the Act does not settle. A supplier must realise a connection within a reasonable period, but the statute puts no number on it, and there is no statutory waiting time for a new connection. That leaves the timetable to the contract, which is why the quotation and the accompanying conditions deserve close reading: an indicative schedule, a clear moment from which delay entitles you to something, and a description of what happens if the works run over are all matters of contractual freedom. For businesses depending on a delivery date, agreeing a penalty or a right to terminate is far more effective than relying on the general standard of reasonableness afterwards. The costs of the connection are equally a matter for the quotation, subject to the maximum amounts the ACM sets for the regulated components.

The Wet collectieve warmte: what is changing

The Heat Act is being replaced. The Collective Heat Act (Wet collectieve warmte) was adopted by the Senate on 9 December 2025 and published in the Staatsblad on 22 January 2026. It has not yet entered into force: that happens by royal decree, and the date has not been fixed for all provisions. Until the relevant articles come into force, the Heat Act described here remains the applicable law, and rights and obligations under existing delivery agreements continue to be assessed under it.

Three changes matter most for users and building owners. Municipalities will designate a heat area and appoint the heat company responsible for it, which formalises what already happens in practice. Heat companies operating a designated collective heat system will in principle have to be under a public majority shareholding, with a transitional regime for existing private heat companies. And the tariff method moves away from the gas reference towards a method based on the actual costs of the heat company plus a regulated return, which is intended to make bills more predictable and better justified. Because entry into force is staged, the practical advice is to check which regime governs your situation at the moment your dispute arises rather than assuming the new rules already apply.

What to do if your supplier is not meeting its obligations

Start with the file. Note the dates and durations of every interruption, keep the annual statements and compare each tariff component with the ACM decision for that year, and record what you reported and when. Then put the complaint to the supplier in writing, state precisely what you want, and set a reasonable deadline. If the response is unsatisfactory, the disputes committee is the natural next step for a consumer or small business claim, and a report to the ACM is appropriate where the problem is structural rather than individual. Where the amounts are substantial, or where a business interruption has caused real loss, the ordinary civil route remains open and can be combined with a claim for damages.

At Law and More we advise consumers, owners associations and businesses on disputes with heat suppliers: assessing delivery agreements and general terms, recovering overcharged tariffs, claiming compensation after repeated failures, challenging a threatened disconnection, and preparing proceedings before the disputes committee or the court. Our lawyers work across energy law and tenancy law, which matters when the supply runs through a landlord rather than a licensed heat company. If you are having problems with your heat supplier, contact us to discuss your position.