Frustrated residents of Broughton Gifford have lodged a formal complaint with the Energy Ombudsman, accusing Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) of failing to engage with them following a power outage last July.
The outage, which lasted around 24 hours, was caused by a fallen wire in the Broughton Gifford/Great Chalfield area. Residents say this followed a separate outage in nearby Holt the previous day, raising concerns about the reliability of the network.
Christopher Lowe, speaking on behalf of affected residents, claims SSEN has refused to take responsibility for the disruption or acknowledge the losses suffered by households.
“The power cut caused significant damage—power showers, battery chargers, sound bars and all sorts of electrical equipment stopped working,” he said. “SSEN insists there was nothing unusual about the outage, yet many of us experienced damaged or destroyed equipment as a direct result. They have consistently failed to answer our questions and have given excuses for not addressing our complaint.”
Residents also allege that SSEN has not escalated their concerns in line with its own complaints procedure. “There is no indication that these issues have been referred to senior management, as they should have been,” Christopher added.
In response to the complaint, SSEN has cited delays due to damage caused by Storm Darragh in December. The company has also stated it is not liable for the outage but has not explained why.
While SSEN has reportedly offered a ‘goodwill’ payment to one individual, other affected residents have received nothing. “It’s just poor service, and they should be held accountable,” said Christopher.
A spokesperson for SSEN said, “Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) is in ongoing discussions with customers who have complained about the power cut that happened in July of last year.
“Under regulatory conditions – and according to the terms of connection – SSEN carried out investigations that showed the network operated correctly and there were no issues with the supply.”
However, Christopher disputes this, calling SSEN’s claim of ‘ongoing discussions’ misleading.
He said, “They are just simply hoping we will give up and go away. We believe that there are others, in addition to the seven cases we are aware of, who also suffered damage and loss from these outages. They have consistently avoided answering questions raised by us and, from the results of the Data Subject Access Requests received to date, it appears they have no intention of seriously engaging with us and they continue to fail in following their own complaints procedure.”
Pictured: Christopher Lowe
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