Reconnecting our final customers affected by Storm Austen - Monday 26 October

We’re now reconnecting the last of our customers in central southern England who lost power supplies as a result of Storm Austen.   

Working in high winds and heavy rain, our teams of engineers have responded to network damage across our south distribution area since Storm Austen swept in on Friday afternoon, bringing wind gusts of up to 70mph. 

Since that time - and in challenging conditions - we’ve worked hard to reconnect over 62,000 customers affected by both Storm Austen and Storm Boelo, which began to impact power supplies on Saturday evening. 

Customers whose power supplies were interrupted by Storm Boelo will also be reconnected this evening. 

Whilst we work to restore the final handful of customers, we will be returning to ‘business as usual’ operating status tonight and will continue to work over the coming days to bring our network back to full operational health.  

We’d like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding while we worked in challenging conditions to safely repair and restore their network, and for their help in identifying any ongoing isolated outages.

If any customers are still without supplies and haven’t been contacted by us, please call us on the freephone 105 number to report your fault. It may a very localised issue, not visible on central systems.  

Reimbursement and compensation  

If you’ve been without power for longer than 12 hours, you’re entitled to claim for costs to cover food and drink while our teams are working to get your power restored. You’re entitled to £30 per person in the household for every 24 hours without power.  

To claim this, please email stormpaymentssouth@ssen.co.uk with the following information. Our team will be back in touch to confirm your reimbursement has been processed via cheque. 

• Full Name 
• Number of people in the property
• Full Address 
• Itemised Receipt  
• Email Address 
• Contact Telephone Number  

📞 Help and advice

If you see any damage to our equipment, please stay back, don’t touch it and instead report it to us directly by calling 105, or via our Power Track Website, and engineers will investigate as soon as possible.

Customers are also being encouraged to be prepared for the possibility of disruption to supplies by:

• Saving the emergency power cut number - '105' - to your phone to report any loss of supply or damage to the electricity network
• Visiting our Power Track Website to give you details of power cuts and restoration times. You can also report power cuts and network damage through Power Track.
• Visiting the "Preparing for a power cut" section on our website, where there is a wealth of advice and information, or to chat live to one of our advisors via the Webchat service

Customers are also eligible for our Priority Services if they:

• Are deaf or hard of hearing
• Have a disability
• Live with children under five
• Are blind or partially-sighted
• Have a chronic illness
• Use medical equipment/aids reliant on electricity
• Are over 60.

Find out more about Priority Services or call 0800 294 3259.