That was not the experience of residents who moved into the Ivy apartment block in Franklin last week.

Although a certificate of occupancy had been issued, electricity meters had not been installed for individual apartments. Owners were told they had to make their own arrangements with ActewAGL.

This resulted in quite a bottleneck. Last Friday ActewAGL said it could be up to nine weeks before all the units were connected to an energy source much of the world has taken for granted since the late 19th century.

While it seems almost impossible to decode who is to blame for this fiasco, it is clearly the government's responsibility to ensure builders and developers hand over properties in a service-ready state.

Part of this involves government inspectors signing off on all electrical works before a certificate of occupancy can be issued. How that occurred when the power meters were missing in action will take some explaining.

The government also has a responsibility to ensure essential service providers, in this instance ActewAGL, do whatever is required to give people timely access to power, water and the like.

Andrew Barr is to be commended for successfully pressuring ActewAGL to put the Ivy power meters in its "things to do this week or next" basket. But owners are still owed a full explanation of how this situation was allowed to occur in the first place.

The possibility of this type of fiasco was first raised more than a year ago after ActewAGL unilaterally chose to impose a direct charge for new power meters from July 1, 2015.

The Master Builders Association spoke out strongly against that, flagging the possible confusion over who was responsible for meters for projects already in the pipeline.

Clearly those within government failed to follow that issue through to resolution. As a result Ivy's occupants have been left – literally – in the dark.

This is the same type of administrative oversight that resulted in Canberrans being short-changed on the residential building work insurance which underpins statutory builders warranties.

When the government extended cover from five years to six years it didn't bother to amend the legislation specifying the minimum period an insurer, in this case QBE, had to cover if a builder dies, goes broke or does a runner.

The result is if the buyer is lucky, he or she is protected for six years. If, instead, the builder does a moonlight flit, and the owner has the misfortune to have a policy which fails to mirror the warranty provisions, they are only covered for five.

Buyers are paying a princely sum in property taxes in the ACT. It's not unreasonable for them to expect the approvals process to protect them from issues like those highlighted by the Ivy development.