Residents will be aware of the recent power cuts in the village. The Parish Council has raised a complaint with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) on behalf of the village in order to establish the cause, as well as to obtain assurance that SSEN will endeavour to reduce these in the future.
SSEN has confirmed that the outages were the result of a fault with the main network. It appears that it was caused by trees coming into contact with cables because of the recent high winds. SSEN have a regular maintenance programme to reduce this type of fault, but, as a result of the pandemic crisis, this work was put on hold. As restrictions have now eased, SSEN are working with their contractor to ensure that the tree cutting work is completed as quickly as possible.
The Parish Council has been advised that there will be a planned outage at some point in the near future, in order that the tree work can be completed safely. SSEN will advise residents of this outage as early as possible. The statutory notice period is 48 hours, however SSEN generally provide a minimum of a week’s notice of such outages.
SSEN has advised that they will ensure that their Customer Community Advisor for our area makes contact with the Parish Council, with a view to our working together to discuss possible contingency measures for any planned or unplanned interruptions in future. Anyone who relies on the electricity supply for any medical, or other health issues, should contact the Parish Clerk at longwittpc@hotmail.co.uk so that the Parish Council can work with the Customer Community Advisor to mitigate any issues during any future interruptions.
SSEN has confirmed that, in respect of the short outages (anything less than five minutes), they do not generally take any immediate action to investigate the cause because the supply is reinstated so quickly. However, they said that the higher the number of complaints they receive, the more likely they will undertake an investigation. With this in mind, the Parish Council would suggest that if there are unplanned outages in the future, residents call the Power Cut number, 105. Full details of what to do if there is a power cut can be found on the SSEN website.
