Storm Arwen: Thousands of customers given 'unacceptable service' Ofgem finds
Over 900,000 households were without power, some for over 10 days.
Last November larges parts of the UK were hit by Storm Arwen with some devastating effects, now a review says that customers were given an 'unacceptable' level of service.
Almost one million homes were left without power, some households had more than a week before being switched back on, with Scotland, North East England and North West England the hardest hit,
Ofgem launched a six-month review into how the industry handled the situation and has now published its findings.
It has ruled that some affected customers were left without any power for "an unacceptable amount of time, received poor communication from their network operator and compensation payments took too long".
The watchdog added: "28% of customers were given a restoration time that was not within 24 hours of their actual restoration time, and some affected customers did not think that the support available was made clear to them."
However, it also found that distribution network companies (DNOs) did initiate their emergency plans before the storm hit, but these were "not sufficient" to deal with the scale of damage that was caused.
Northern Powergrid was named as one of those companies, with Ofgem finding it failed to carry out all of its duties under its own planned winter preparedness campaign.
The company also failed to directly contact vulnerable customers, who were due to receive additional support during a power cut, and its call centre "fell below" the expected standards.
As a result of the issues, three DNOs - Northern Powergrid, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks and Electricity North West - have already paid nearly £30m in direct compensation to their affected customers but they have all agreed to pay a further £10.3m in voluntary redress payments, Ofgem said.
These will be through "contributions to community funds and in donations to vulnerability support charities".
'Frequency of extreme weather events is only set to increase'
Chief executive of Ofgem Jonathan Brearley 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."
He added that companies "need to do better" to prevent power disruptions, restore electricity quicker and keep customers informed with "accurate and timely information".
"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," he concluded.
During the storm, most network faults were caused by strong winds or trees and branches falling on to power lines.
Ofgem did find "some correlation between poles that were damaged and their age" but suggested that this requires "further investigation".
What happens now?
Following its review, Ofgem has made 20 recommendations to DNOs in order to ensure customers get better service during severe weather.
These include stress testing their websites and call centres, developing "more robust mechanisms" to deal with compensation payments and submitting their winter preparedness plans to the energy watchdog.
It did also recommend that network infrastructure and guidance, such as the design of overhead power lines, should be reviewed to see if there is a way to increase its resilience against bad weather.