ROB MCLAREN

BUSINESS EDITOR

The question of job losses was raised time and time again when OVO and SSE first announced they had struck a deal.

I asked the question, politicians asked the question and so did workers and unions.

At every point we were told there were no plans for redundancies. The transition would be seamless.

The world has changed beyond recognition from January, when the £500 million deal to acquire SSE’s domestic arm was concluded.

OVO has now said the coronavirus lockdown has accelerated customers’ moves towards digital services.

It processed more than a million online transactions in April while at the same time seeing a 69% drop in home service engineering work and a 92% reduction in smart meter installations. Meter reading activity has completely stopped since March.

Everyone is adapting to life during the pandemic and maybe there will be a permanent societal shift towards online services. Maybe. Maybe not.

What I would predict with more certainty is a lot of pent up demand for services like boiler repairs and smart meter installations when lockdown ends, temperatures fall and people are more comfortable with strangers coming into their home.

The whole point of the furlough scheme, which OVO has taken advantage of, is to give employers some breathing room and to discourage rash jobs decisions when no one really knows how the postpandemic landscape will look.

It is disappointing that OVO has acted now to cut so many staff.

It is not just Perth workers whose jobs are at risk but electrical and gas engineers who are dotted around the country.

I feel for those workers who will be going into the toughest imaginable jobs marketplace.