So I came home tonight to find two gas board vans in the street.
I said to the workies: “You’re not looking at the gas pressure by any chance are you? Because ours was fluctuating quite a bit yesterday”

Turns out they were and 3 other houses in the street had problems. One had no gas at all. Bloke comes in, looks at our internal meter, does the sucking in air thing and says: “Whoever put this in has just sleeved 16mm tubing inside the existing pipes and it’s not a wide enough bore for your supply. We’ll need to replace this with an external meter. We have crews out tomorrow I’ll add you to the list.”

While I appreciate getting it sorted out so promptly, I’m not sure I want an ugly-arse white PVC box stuck to the front of our 100-year old terraced cottage.

Are there any more sightly options?

get a brown one

Is brown PVC less bogging than white?
At least it wouldn’t go yellow after a week I suppose.

http://www.mytub.co.uk/product_information.php?product=317342

It is if its half buried

Not allowed lots of supply side pipe on your property, but you can have the meter concealed in something better at your expense yes.

Thanks, I found http://www.meterboxes.co.uk/content/METERBOXESmeterboxes.asp?TypeID=1&CatID=23

This:

Looks a bit better than what the neighbour has which is something like this:

Only kinda yellowing with green damp on top.

But I’m not sure if they are going to give us any choice.
I don’t really want to be without gas, but I don’t want an ugly solution forced onto us when a few quid would get something less ugly.

You can get ones set into the wall (our leccy one does). Still unsightly but less protruding.

Looking at that site I think you can only have it set into the wall if you have cavity walls, but we don’t