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Electricity North West (ENW) has revealed it will not be paying compensation to customers for power outages caused by Storm Desmond despite receiving 22,000 applications.
ENW said its efforts to quickly restore power following the storm means it met the standards of service required by the regulator and it would therefore not be making payments.
ENW operations director Martin Deehan said: “Having now analysed each claim, and thanks to the monumental effort of our engineers in extremely difficult circumstances, we do not believe that we have fallen below [the required] standard.”
Regulation for extreme weather events allows network operators 48 hours to reconnect power before customers automatically qualify for a payment of £70.
However this qualifying period only begins when the company is able to access its equipment.
ENW blamed the large number of enquiries and continuous bad weather during December for the delay in responding to customers.
Deehan said: “I understand that this is not the news that many had hoped for.
“We will be writing to each customer who has made a claim so that they can use our letter as evidence to claim for any losses as a result of the power cut through their insurance company.”
Ratings agency Moody’s has already said that the costs of December’s previous storm, Storm Eva, to network companies is likely to be “insignificant”, with Northern Powergrid liable to compensation payments of £0.25 million and ENW for £0.1 million in compensation.
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