North East MPs have welcomed changes suggested by a damning report which called a power company's response to Storm Arwen "unacceptable" and said they were "pleased" residents were being listened to.
The energy watchdog Ofgem said customers were provided an "unacceptable service" following Storm Arwen after it left thousands of homes in the North East without power last November - some for more than 10 days. Northumberland and County Durham were among the worst affected areas after 100mph winds uprooted trees, and damaged power lines.
But in a damning report published on Thursday, Ofgem said although staff at Northern Powergrid and other power companies worked hard there was poor communication, insufficient planning before the storm, and a failure to contact vulnerable customers. The regulator said failures in the Northern Powergrid call centre could be a breach of its licence.
Read more: Storm Arwen power company response "unacceptable" and could have breached licence, report says
Ofgem has issued 20 recommendations that aim to prevent a repeat of last year’s chaos, including better testing of websites and call centres to ensure they can cope with added winter pressures. Richard Holden, MP for North West Durham said a public meeting will be held into the new Ofgem report into Northern Powergrid’s Storm Arwen response on Friday calling the report "damning" and "revealing".
He said: "This Friday at 6pm, at the Castleside Village Hall in Consett, a public meeting will be held into the new Ofgem report into Northern Powergrid’s Storm Arwen response earlier this year. The report is as damning as it is revealing.
"Some of my most affected and vulnerable constituents spent days and weeks without power. Without hot food. Without safety and security. Being told power would come on day after day to no avail. This can never happen again, and I hope this Ofgem report goes some way in making sure this is the case. The report’s three overarching recommendations include measures to improve the efficiency of their general maintenance; strengthen their systems of communication; and increase the speed to which power returns to people’s homes and businesses.
"I sincerely hope these are promptly acted upon by Northern Powergrid, to ensure their future responses to natural disasters can learn valuable lessons from their botched job over Storm Arwen – to ensure this never happens to communities like North West Durham again."
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, who had no power for eight days after the storm, said it's "fantastic" that the difficulties people faced after Storm Arwen were being "acknowledged".
The MP contributed to the reviews, with contributions informed by both correspondence she received from affected constituents on their experiences and frustrations in reporting their power outages and receiving accurate information on repairs, and from the surveys, she ran on how the compensation schemes performed.
She said: "It is fantastic to have the difficulties we experienced after Storm Arwen acknowledged by both BEIS and Ofgem as both serious and requiring remedy. I think the recommendations in the report are fair and necessary, and the targets set are reasonable and crucially should come before autumn comes once more [by September 2022 for most recommendations].
"I am really pleased we have been listened to, and I thank BEIS and Ofgem for their work, but most of all I thank the hundreds of local residents who took the time to share their experiences with me and complete my surveys so I was able to present a weight of evidence to inform these reviews.
"I am also pleased BEIS is recommending Ofgem reconsider the £700 cap on compensation, which was voluntarily lifted on this occasion by the DNOs, as it would not have been adequate recompense for a lot of affected customers. I look forward to meeting with Northern Powergrid and Scottish Power in due course to find out how they are going about implementing these recommendations, and how they will ensure we achieve greater resilience in our network to prevent outages, and systems more capable of good communication and service to customers in the event that outages take place."
Guy Opperman, MP for Hexham, said he repeatedly met with Northern Powergrid, independent regulators, and government ministers to make "the case for real change". He said he is "confident" that power providers will be better prepared for extreme weather in the future.
He said: "The two reports are very detailed, and make dozens of recommendations that will assist communities affected in Northumberland, most notably improvements and resilience planning so that we are better prepared for severe weather events. There are also mandatory directions to improve the reinstatement of power, communications to affected customers and the subsequent compensation process.
"I have met repeatedly with Northern Powergrid, independent regulators and government ministers and made the case for real change going forward. We held four public meetings in January 2022 post Storm Arwen in Hexham, Bellingham, Allendale and Ponteland. Massive thanks to all the locals who came and fed in their experiences, and helped shape the change.
"Much to digest but I am confident that power providers and consequently rural Northumberland residents are going to be much better prepared for extreme weather events going forward."
Responding to the Ofgem report, Phil Jones, chief executive of Northern Powergrid, said: "As we said at the time, we understand how challenging Storm Arwen was for our customers and we are sorry for the difficulty and disruption it caused to their lives. We appreciate the patience that they showed and the dedication of our team who worked through some of the most difficult conditions we have ever faced.
"The extreme nature of the event meant we learned some difficult lessons. It highlighted some limitations in our systems and showed us things we can do to be able to provide a stronger response to more extreme storms. We are committed to doing those things to make the communities that we serve more resilient to extreme weather events.
"We started to take action to improve our approach to customer communications and estimated restoration times during the later stages of the response to Storm Arwen, and we continued to work to improve that in the storms that followed. We have already seen some benefit from those early improvements that are helping to keep individuals, families, businesses and other key partners better updated and able to make more informed decisions in severe weather events. And we will keep working to improve – in line with the actions called for in the reports.
"We are also investing in improving the resilience of our website, telephony systems and power cut map in periods of exceptional demand. Those investments are happening now and will provide greater support for our customers, increased call capacity and better messaging when we have large volumes of calls."
Mr Jones added that Northern Powergrid would fund charitable and not-for-profit activities to the tune of £7.5m to improve the resilience of communities in the North, focussing on people who need help the most both in storm situations and to address the longer-term effects of climate change.
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