Thousands of customers were provided an “unacceptable service” following Storm Arwen after it left thousands of homes in the North East last November, the energy watchdog Ofgem has said.
Winds of 100mph caused widespread disruption, uprooted trees and damaged power lines, cutting the electricity supply from November 26 across northern England and Scotland, with Northumberland and County Durham among the worst affected areas. Power outages lasted for more than 10 days in some areas and customers complained of poor communication from their suppliers about when they would be reconnected.
Ofgem said staff at Northern Powergrid and other power companies worked hard in difficult circumstances but found that many people were left with an “unacceptable service” dogged by poor communication, insufficient planning before the storm and a failure to contact vulnerable customers on its own register.
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The regulator said failures in the Northern Powergrid call centre could be a breach of its licence. The company has paid more than £20m in compensation as a result of the storm but recently issued accounts showing rising profits during the year of the storm. 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.
Jonathan Brearley, chief executive of Ofgem, said: “Distribution network companies faced challenging conditions in the aftermath of Storm Arwen, and I pay tribute to the many colleagues in those companies who supported customers and worked to get them back on power as quickly as possible. However, it was unacceptable that nearly 4,000 homes in parts of England and Scotland were off power for over a week, often without accurate information as to when power would be restored.
“Network companies need to do better, not just to prevent power disruptions, but to ensure that when power is off, they work smarter to get people back on power quicker, and keep customers informed with accurate and timely information. This is the very least customers should be able to expect.
“The frequency of extreme weather events is only set to increase so it is really important that industry, and those involved more widely, learn from Storm Arwen to better respond in future.”
The Ofgem review found:
- Some affected customers remained off power for an unacceptable amount of time, received poor communication from their network operator and compensation payments took too long.
- Plans in place to deal with the storm were not sufficient to deal with the scale of the damage.
- Northern Powergrid did not directly contact vulnerable customers enrolled on its Priority Services Register prior to Storm Arwen, which should have been carried out as part of its winter preparedness campaign. 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.
- Limited remote monitoring stopped firms from understanding the full scale and complexity of faults.
- There was some correlation between the age of electricity poles and how badly damaged they were in the storm, although this needed further examination.
Berwick MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan - who faced some criticism for being away from her constituency when people were suffering in the wake of Storm Arwen - has welcomed the report.
She said: “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.”
Hexham MP Guy Opperman said: "There is much to digest but am confident that power providers and consequently rural #Northumberland residents are going to be much better prepared for extreme weather events going forward."
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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