Reform UK has failed to pay the energy bills of at least three households as part of a legally questionable giveaway stunt, residents have said.

The far-right party in March announced a postcode lottery-style contest to “win your energy bills paid for a year along with your whole street”, and last week leader Nigel Farage and his treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick arrived on St Malo Road in Wigan to meet the winners.

But Angie Ecclestone told the Telegraph she was among those excluded from the prize despite living on the road for 14 years. She found out about the prize when her sister called to congratulate her.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, but I didn’t realise I had been excluded and that my neighbours had all received a letter and instructions,” she said.

​Another St Malo Road resident who did not receive the prize, Fraser Hayes, said the stunt was “appalling”. “It’s obviously a data grab,” he added.

The giveaway is ironic given that some of the party’s own donors have invested in or are linked to the energy sector, which benefits from higher household bills.

The party has received over £500,000 from Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm Hosking Partners had around £108m invested in the energy sector in 2021, according to climate-focussed news outlet DeSmog.

The prize has also raised questions about whether paying voters’ bills may count as treating, an offence that involves giving people food or provisions to get them to vote or refrain from voting. Reform said it had “no concerns” about this.

There were also questions as to how the winners of the giveaway were chosen. The winners, June and Raymond Dibble, have previously been pictured with Farage and were the proposers of local Reform election candidate Lee Moffitt.

A Reform spokesperson said: “Letters are incoming for the remaining households. We always intended to pay for the whole road.”

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