National Grid customers to receive safety check visits

We’ll be visiting properties across our region from this week as part of a safety inspection programme.

Domestic and small business customers in the following areas will receive visits from our approved contractors to check that service termination points inside properties are working as they should:

• Parts of Torquay covered by TQ2
• Exmouth and Lympstone covered by EX8
• Redruth and Pool covered by TR15
• Lyme Regis covered by DT7
• Swansea covered by SA5
• South and west of Shrewsbury covered by SY3

The service termination point, also known as a cut-out, is the indoor location where the main incoming electricity service cable and fuse is situated, in most cases close to the electricity meter. The cut-out is situated in a meter cabinet on the outside of most modern properties built since the 1980s, though it could be located within the property adjacent to the electricity meter or the customer’s consumer unit.

Inspectors will visually inspect equipment belonging to our network and energy suppliers, and record basic details. No disassembly work will be carried out and customers’ power supplies will not be interrupted while inspections occur.

We’re aiming to complete 400,000 inspections of cut-outs in homes and small businesses across the Midlands, South West and South Wales every year in a rolling programme over the next 20 years. This is part of our Ofgem licence obligation to carry out asset inspections to ensure cut-outs at low voltage metered properties are operating safely.

Richard Brady, Policy Engineer at National Grid Electricity Distribution, who is heading up the inspection programme, said: “The UK is recognised internationally as having one of the most resilient and safe energy systems and this inspection programme underlines our commitment to the highest safety standards.

“Inspectors will visually examine cut-outs to check they are working as they should, taking photos and notes for our records. In the unlikely event of a defective cut-out being found, our engineers will be sent to carry out repairs at no cost to the customer.

“Visits will also be an opportunity to confirm what types of low-carbon technologies (LCT) are connected to our network, for example electric vehicle chargers and solar panels, to help our planning for future load growth on the network, and enable LCT items to be connected quicker in the future as we will have records of the cut-out asset on site and its condition.

“These are important safety visits but we understand they could be inconvenient for customers and apologise in advance if this is the case.”

Inspectors will be from a company called Calisen and will be clearly identifiable as working for us. They will be able to present ID and authorisation to enter properties.

Customers will have the option of taking their own photographs of their cut-out and meter and sending them to us to decide if a follow-up visit is needed.

More details of the programme can be found here.