Residents of the North East who spent days stranded without power for days during Storm Arwen have echoed the findings of a report which called a power company's response 'unacceptable'.
Northumberland and Country Durham were among the worst-affected areas when, in November, the storm ripped up trees and damaged powerlines, leaving thousands of families in the dark. On Wednesday, energy regluator Ofgem ruled that Northern Powergrid could have breached its license due to failures in its call centres, while customers recieved poor communication and plans in place to deal with storms weren't to deal with the scale of the damage.
Among those affected were Laura and David Venner, whose home in Medburn, near Ponteland, was cut off, leaving them and their three disabled children forced to spend a week sharing a hotel room.
Read more: Storm Arwen power company response "unacceptable" and could have breached licence, report says
Responding to the report, David said he was pleased to see Northern Powergrid's Communication criticised, as this had been his major issue.
He said: "We kept speaking to people and they'd say 'somebody will call you back the following day' and the following day there was nothing, we would try and ring and we'd be number 180 in the queue or whatever, it was just impossible to get hold of them.
"It's hard enough for anybody with kids but when you have three kids with additional needs it's very hard. With not knowing how long we were going to be there we didn't end up taking a week's worth of food or meds, we had to keep going back.
"I would rather them have been realistic at the beginning saying 'it could be up to a week, it could be two weeks' rather than false promises, it would have been easier if we had known from day one."
He said he hoped the report would help prevent similar issues from happening again, also calling on Northern Powergrid to ensure vulnerable customers, including families like his, were able to access priority services when needed. The report found Northern Powergrid did not directly contact vulnerable customers enrolled on its Priority Services Register prior to Storm Arwen as it should have. The firm accepted the performance of its call centre fell below the standards it should have been able to meet during a severe storm, potentially breaching its licence.
The dad's concerns were echoed by Hugo McGowan, who lives and works in Longwitton, Northumberland, who experiences powercuts during both Storm Arwen and Storm Malik. He called the communication from the power company during the crisis 'woefully inadequate'.
Hugo said: "On one level, it was a true unprecedented event, so in many ways nobody really could have prepared for that. But the thing that really got to me was the way they kept saying 'your power will be back by 4pm' and it wasn't - if somebody had said it would be a week or ten days it would have been much easier.
"Obviously I have a degree of sympathy for them but I think in this day and age where you can communicate really quickly you need to take care of what you are actually saying, because it got very frustrating."
Again, he argued that learning lessons for the future was more important than apportioning blame. He said: "We live in a blame society and I don't think this is a heads-on-sticks situation, but I do think that it's very important that they pay attention to what their loyal customers are saying to them, because the sense of frustration you get when you try to get through to them it ridiculous."
Hugo, who is an engineer, echoed the report's finding that individual engineers and members of Northern Powergrid staff had worked hard and done a good job in extremely difficult circumstances.
Paul Robinson, 69, who lives in Dipton, set up a petition demanding compensation after residents in the village were left without power for 41 hours during Storm Arwen - seven hours under the time limit for a payout during a severe storm. Paul, who is still attempting to gain compensation for himself and his neighbours, accused the company of being 'inconsistent' with the help it provided. Whilst he said he hoped the report would lead to learning for the future, he argued there still needed to be more consequences for the problems people in the North East faced.
He said: "It looks like a good report for the future but I think they've still got to address the fairness of compensation and the problems with communication. Really it was a frightening situation for people and people were very cold."
Teacher Chloe Gillie, 39, who lives in Hamsterley, faced a battle with Northern Powergrid over exactly how long she and her neighbours had been without power, which she said was still ongoing. She said she hoped that following the report lessons would be learnt about offering more support to vulnerable people and ensuring those who can't access the internet were supported and kept informed.
She said: "It was just a horrible time - my 83-year-old neighbour had to cook over a gas camping stove, he could have burned the house down. It was hard for a lot of people.
"I think they should have been coming round to speak to customers, finding out if people consider themselves to be vulnerable and putting more in place for them. Not everybody can access the internet and those who can't are more likely to be vulnerable."
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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