Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Locals ‘cheesed off’ amid string of power outages
Frustration after 40 cuts in three months
Villagers plagued by an “unacceptable” number of power cuts are demanding compensation from grid bosses. Homes and businesses in Bridge, near Canterbury, have suffered more than 40 outages in the last three months. This has prompted the parish council to complain to UK Power Networks, in a bid to put an end to the problem.
Some residents have even taken to buying back-up power supplies for their computers, while others have been forced to call out engineers to fix boilers and reset heating systems. Parish council clerk Jennifer Heap says the village cannot be
expected to continue putting up with the outages.
In an email to UK Power Networks, she says: “Not only is it inconvenient, but it has cost residents and business owners time and money. “We would like to know when the problem will be resolved and how the village can be compensated for the inconvenience.” Many residents have posted on the village Facebook page about the inconveniences the power cuts have caused them. Among them was retired nurse Peggy Pryer, who told the Gazette: “I’m getting extremely angry now.
“There was recently another short power cut that puts my central heating controls up the creek every time.
“Why is this happening time and time again?
“A lot of people are really cheesed off about it, even having to light candles.
“It’s not much fun to wake up at 7am on a freezing cold morning and find your central heating hasn’t come on because the
timer is out of sync.” Some residents claim the outages have even affected electrical components in their boilers, which not be fixed until technicians were called. Among the many others to complain is former city council leader Simon Cook, who works from home as an analyst for the Spectator magazine.
“A lot of people work on computers from home and it’s been hugely frustrating to keep losing power, albeit briefly,” he said. “You have to reboot everything and then it happens again.
“But UK Power Networks say they will not offer any compensation because the power cuts only usually last a few seconds.” A UK Power Networks spokesman says the firm is sorry for the interruptions.
She claims the issues have been caused by a “transient fault” on the electricity network. “On January 18, we found a fault on a piece of substation equipment, which has been removed,” she said.
“This had triggered our automatic switches to operate and proved complex to locate.
“While we aren’t aware of any further interruptions since, we’ll continue to monitor the network and take any further action to ensure reliable supplies. “Our patrols initially pointed to the underlying cause being tree branches coming into contact with the overhead line, so we have already carried out trimming in the area, with further sessions being arranged.” The spokesman says the outages - due to their length - do not meet the criteria set by regulator Ofgem to oblige UK Power Networks to pay compensation.