SSEN urges customers to claim compensation for Storm Floris outages

The Herald Scotland

4 days ago

While more than 98 per cent of all those who lost supply due to the storm have now been reconnected, hundreds of engineers remain out on the network as of Wednesday evening.
Most of those affected are in parts of the Highlands, including communities in the Great Glen, Sheildaig, Conon Falls, Conon Bridge, Tain and Evanton.
As parts of the country which were less-severely affected have been reconnected, further resources have been diverted to the Highlands. SSEN's aim is to repair the last-remaining outages in Aberdeenshire by the end of this evening.
Specialist overhead lines teams from SSEN's central southern England network area have travelled to Scotland to reinforce restoration work in the north of the country. #
The storm caused widespread disruption to power networks (Image: Stuart Hatch/SSEN) Helicopters and drones have also been used for a second day to inspect the network from above, meaning the extent of damage can be established more quickly, and repairs planned accordingly.
Tree-cutting teams have cleared debris hindering access to faults, thus allowing repairs to progress.
Meanwhile, SSEN's Welfare Team has organised the provision of hot meals in affected communities, either by hiring in hot food vans, or by working in partnership with local cafes and restaurants.
Storm Floris has been confirmed as a Category 2 Severe Weather Event, which means customers without power for more than 48 hours continuously, will receive a Guaranteed Standards payment of £85.00 and a subsequent payment of £45.00 for each continuous 6-hour period that they did not have power thereafter.
Guaranteed Standards payments are issued automatically, and customers do not need to make a claim or contact us to receive this.
SSEN Distribution's Director of Customer Operations for the north of Scotland, Andy Smith, said: 'Our absolute focus this evening remains the same as when this storm first hit – to restore those customers who lost power, as safely and as quickly as we can.
'Thanks to a huge, combined team effort, great progress has been made over the past 24 hours, with several thousand more customers being reconnected. This work goes on, and while it does, our operation to keep our customers, supported and informed continues too.
'I'd also like to thank people and businesses in the Inverness area for their generous response to our appeal for available accommodation for our engineering teams.'
Engineers have been deployed to remote locations (Image: SSEN) Justice Secretary Angela Constance has thanked responders for their efforts to support communities affected by Storm Floris.
Ms Constance said: 'I want to thank everyone in the public, private and third sector for the role they played in responding to Storm Floris. It was a significant and unseasonal storm with the worst affected areas covering a wide geographical spread.
'Engineers have worked tirelessly over the past two days to return power to the remaining affected properties as soon as possible.