The first outage took place on 12 October 2016, followed by two further incidences on 2 January 2017 and 9 January 2017, with Northern Powergrid Yorkshire (NPY) called out on all three occasions. Sharp Cutters is based on the Birksland Industrial Estate in Bradford.
Sharp company secretary Harry Lingard said the £795.54 figure accounts for “significant commercial damage”, due to a laser having to be restored by an engineer after the third callout.
10-staff Sharp took the complaint to the Energy Ombudsman after challenging NPY with the charge that they should have noticed the fault on the first or second callout.
NPY offered to pay a goodwill payment of £100, which was challenged by Lingard but upheld by the ombudsman on 23 May. Lingard has now been told he can no longer appeal the decision and is considering taking the matter to the Small Claims Court.
He said: “On the third occasion the engineer who was sent out detected the problem by listening and could hear a crackling under the car park and the fault was fixed. We knew it was a fault between the bus station and our works and they knew all the time it was their fault on the first occasion.”
Lingard said that NPY had claimed to the ombudsman that it had fitted fault location equipment and “mechanical sniffers” after the first callout on the estate to try and detect the fault, but when he challenged them to provide the dates this had been done so he could check his CCTV, he said that NPY “went quiet”.
He added: “The result was, I found, appalling. I just got a letter back from the ombudsman quoting NPY, taking no interest in what I’d said. We went through an exhaustive process in which my argument was given no credence whatsoever and they went on to offer just £100.”
In the letter seen by PrintWeek, the ombudsman states: “We note you dispute that mechanical sniffers were used but it does appear that it was via this method that the fault was located.
“You consider Northern Powergrid Yorkshire to be responsible for the third loss of supply. You consider that if it had acted diligently and traced the fault the third loss would not have occurred. You explain that the loss led to an engineer having to attend site to restart your laser at a cost of £795.54, which you request is reimbursed.
It then quotes from the National Terms of Connection, which states: “We do not guarantee that we will convey electricity through our network at all times, or that electricity delivered through our network will be free of brief variations in voltage or frequency.”
It goes on to say: “Northern Powergrid Yorkshire cannot therefore guarantee that electricity will be conveyed at all times and that there will be no interruptions to the service.”
NPY also said the equipment detected faults on 21 October 2016, 11 December 2016 and 4 January 2017 but none led to significant power losses.
A spokesperson for Northern Powergrid confirmed it had a received a complaint and offered a goodwill gesture payment to the customer.
The spokesperson said: “We always aim to resolve complaints directly with our customers. When this is not possible we appropriately notify the customer of their right to contact the industry ombudsman. In this case the ombudsman was contacted and it found in our favour, agreeing that we had done all we could to resolve the fault on our network as quickly as possible."
The Energy Ombudsman was unavailable for comment.
