The Odesa District Administrative Court fully satisfied the lawsuit of the City Municipal Enterprise «Khersonteploenergo» against the Main Department of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection in Kherson Oblast. The court found unlawful and annulled the order obliging a recalculation, as well as two rulings imposing fines totaling 6,434.75 UAH.
This is stated in the court’s ruling.
The conflict was preceded by a complaint from a Kherson resident who reported partial lack of heating (in two out of four rooms) in her apartment on Sviatykh Kyryla and Mefodiia Avenue during the 2024–2025 heating season. On this basis the State Service carried out an unscheduled inspection, issued an order requiring a reduction in the heat charge, and fined the municipal utility for its noncompliance.
However, the court concluded that the supervisory authority acted unlawfully and sided with the heat-supplying enterprise.
The court closely analyzed the regulations of the Ministry for Reintegration and the Ministry of Community Development, and, according to the documents, the Kherson City Territorial Community has been officially classified as a territory of active hostilities from May 1, 2023, to the present.
At the same time, Government Resolution No. 127 clearly stipulates that the new Procedure for recalculating the cost of communal services is not applied in such territories from the date of the start of hostilities until their end and for three months thereafter. Thus, «Khersonteploenergo» had no legal grounds or methodologies for carrying out any recalculations for the 2024–2025 period. At the same time, for the previous period the enterprise had already made adjustments for the subscriber on its own initiative.
The court emphasized that the only legitimate confirmation of poor heat quality is a complaint act. To draw it up, the consumer must officially summon the provider’s representatives.
However, the Kherson resident did not contact «Khersonteploenergo» even once during the entire heating season, and the apartment was not inspected.
The State Service justified its order with handwritten numbered lists of buildings that were provided by the engineer of the management company LLC MC «Shumen». The court stressed that these “handwritten notes” are not complaint documents, do not have official status, and therefore could not serve as a basis for conclusions about violations of consumer rights.
The court noted that the question of whether the service was actually of poor quality and whose fault it was (for example, due to a malfunction of internal building networks for which the housing office is responsible) is a civil-law dispute. Such issues must be proven in court proceedings on the basis of adversarial principles, not through directive orders and fines from supervisory authorities.
The Odesa District Administrative Court completely annulled the State Service’s order and both fine rulings (for 6,094.75 UAH and 340 UAH).