A week on from the significant power outages in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and the surrounding areas, having met with representatives from UK Power Networks (UKPN), including the Lead Field Engineer, I am now able to provide a further update.
At approximately 3.30am on Thursday 9th March an unplanned power cut occurred due to a switch gear failure at Goddards Green electricity substation. This impacted homes in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and Hurstpierpoint but power was restored to the affected area within 22 minutes.
Although the damage was limited thanks to UKPN’s fire suppression system, urgent safety-critical work was required. At 10am, several thousand properties were isolated, and power was off for around 3 hours whilst safety checks and works were undertaken.
On Sunday 12th March due to a severe and urgent safety incident supply had to be turned off in a number of areas so that the necessary safety checks could be carried out. UKPN try to give at least 30 minutes’ notice of power cuts where possible however in this case they were only able to give 15 minutes’ notice due to the risky safety conditions onsite.
I am aware that on Monday 13th one school closed as they were expecting another power outage, having looked at the outage map on UKPN’s website. UKPN informed me that, although on their map it may have appeared that a large area would be impacted by the planned power outage, it actually only impacted 11 properties. It looked like the outage would be over a wider area because their map only shows the first four letters of the postcode of the area affected, so as not to show the exact location of the properties impacted. To judge the scale of the outage, double click on the map and it will show the number of properties affected.
A number of constituents have raised concerns about the mobile network outage. The fault at the substation unfortunately caused some of the mobile masts to be knocked out, resulting in the concerning communications blackout for some.
I was reassured to learn UKPN are on track to complete the permanent repair by the end of the day and have had 50 people working around the clock to fix the issues at the substation since the first power outage last week in order to achieve this. The switch gear failure that occurred due to a fault with the equipment was rare and not something that can be prepared for in advance.
From the end of Friday 17th, customers in Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill and the surrounding areas will have a more reliable supply on two electricity circuits, so if one goes out the other one will kick in.
UKPN are governed by the regulatory body Ofgem and cannot guarantee universal power supply.
UKPN will offer compensation if you have suffered four or more power cuts over the course of a year, each lasting over three hours.
Further information can be found here: Compensation: power cut lasting less than 12 hours | UK Power Networks
Every claim for compensation will be considered on its own merits.
During our discussions I strongly stressed the concerns constituents had raised with me, especially those most vulnerable in our community and will continue to monitor the situation.