When you hear the BBC weather forecasters talking about "weather bombs" featuring severe gales and heavy rain, it is obvious to anyone that there is going to be disruption. And the weather was certainly very, very strong in the south of England this Christmas.
On 23 and 24 December gale force winds of up to 80mph, combined with heavy rain and flooding caused considerable damage to Britain's southern infrastructure including our Southern Electric Power Distribution area which covers from Yeovil in Somerset to West London and from Oxfordshire to the Isle of Wight.
However, while some train lines are still not working and some homes are still flooded, our staff managed to repair around 850 separate faults. I am immensely proud of the 500 engineers and support staff who worked with determination and dedication from early in the morning to late into the night throughout the festive period, including Christmas Day, restoring power to more than 130,000 customers, with around 95% of those who lost power early on Christmas Eve having their power restored the next day. Although our engineers worked hard to tackle some particularly challenging faults, unfortunately a number of customers remained without power until 28 December.
As you can imagine we use sophisticated weather monitoring systems to plan five or six days ahead so we can be ready for severe storms like this. This means we were able to safely mobilise crews, materials and equipment, as well as ensure correct levels of staffing in our depots and call centres.
We had also prepared for the winter by carrying out our usual investment programme, totalling £90 million, including a wide range of maintenance and improvement work. Preparation is paramount and at SSEPD, we felt very prepared.
But however prepared you are, as with all critical infrastructure like flood defences, there is a trade-off with cost. We run an efficient network and I am proud of what we deliver. Just as the Environment Agency cannot make flood defences bulletproof, we cannot wave a magic wand when major weather events hit.
We can work seriously hard to get people back on power, and we did. Whether it was the engineers, the linesmen, the tree cutters, the mobile catering drivers or our call centre operators who check-in with vulnerable customers to ensure that medical equipment like dialysis machines or stairlifts are working, we went the extra mile. To my staff, thank you.
Our customers though have been the true heroes. Our customers experienced the storm force weather and felt its impact. But they were so patient, helpful and some of the feedback I have had through Twitter and from our workforce has been very positive.
Power supplies have been restored for some days now and we need to look forward. We are expecting further bad weather tomorrow and we have detailed plans and resources in place to deal with any impact on the network. In addition, there are two things that need to happen following the Christmas storm.
The first is that we will be offering enhanced compensation in recognition of the disruption to customers’ Christmas plans. The levels exceed statutory levels because we recognise what an important time of year it is. We are matching the highest payments in the UK because we don't support postcode lotteries, but we are proud of what we delivered for our customers.
The second though is even more important for the future. While very high wind speeds accompanied by extensive, widespread flooding, impassable roads, difficult ground conditions and large fallen trees made these some of the most challenging working conditions we have ever faced in the south - that does not mean we should just blame weather conditions.
We will therefore be undertaking a consultation in order to get views from employees, partner organisations, relevant experts and, most importantly, our customers on what else might be done to make the electricity network more resilient and to help people when power fails. I know that many customers really appreciated the social media and web updates we gave out, but would often like more exact reconnection times.
This is not easy due to the complex and interconnected nature of the electrical network. For example, your fault may be fixed but there may be others we're working on at several locations that feed it, but let’s look at what we can do here. We need feedback and will be contacting third parties and consulting on our website later this week.
Here we are at the end of 2013. To my customers, thank you for your patience. To my staff, thanks for your hard work. To the agencies and partners we worked with across the south, many thanks. To everyone, let's take what we've learnt from this event forward into 2014 so that we do even better next time.
Further information can be found at: http://www.ssepd.co.uk/goodwill/