Published: Tuesday, 30th December, 2008 1:05pm

Power cuts offer shocks traders

Alloa traders gather in High Street during the power cuts.
Pic by: David Robertson

ALLOA business owners have lambasted ScottishPower "scrooges" for a derisory compensation package offered for the pre-Christmas power cuts.

Large parts of the town were left in darkness for six out of the eight days prior to December 25 - costing shops thousands of pounds in lost revenue.

ScottishPower is now offering damages of £250 for businesses and £150 to domestic customers affected.

But none of these figures will provide adequate compensation to those who have lost thousands during the busiest shopping days of the year.

As reported in last week"s Advertiser businesses throughout Alloa have been financially crippled by the black-out on trade during the worst economic downturn in a century.

John Mylchreest, owner of X-change on Primrose Street, took a paltry £4 on the Saturday before Christmas - the busiest trading day of the year.

He said, 'It"s shocking, a total joke. Surely there should be some kind of special compensation at this time of year, it"s totally unfair.

'I would also like to have it explained to me how they made their judgments as to the length of time we were without power, they are giving us no verification.

'I received a letter stating the lights came back on at 2.19pm on Wednesday 17 December but I was still sitting in the dark at 3pm, how did they make these time judgements?

'I"ve phoned them to question the times, they must be able to show us something.'

It wasn"t only shops that lost out - domestic customers were also badly affected by the black out.

Retired couple Sam and Anne Alcock, who have lived in Alloa for over 42 years, were left in the cold and dark for most of the week leading up to Christmas and received no information during the on-going outage.

Mrs Alcock said, 'Our power was out six out of the eight nights leading up to Christmas and we had no heat the whole time and had to rely on getting soup from Cafe 66 to keep us warm.'

A total of six powercuts were recorded by ScottishPower between 16 and 23 December - lasting from two hours and 47 minutes to 21 hours and 10 minutes.

ScottishPower has since written to all those affected by the cuts blaming the "extremely rare" incident on a series of cable faults.

It also plans to offer customers compensation above the standard £100 for businesses and £50 for homes.

A spokesperson for the energy firm said, 'The interruptions were caused by a number of separate cable faults on the network that supplies the Alloa town centre area.

'It is extremely rare for consecutive faults to develop in this way. The faults have now been repaired, and the network has been reconfigured to ensure another feed from one of the substations to supply the town centre.

'ScottishPower operates the distribution network and promises Guaranteed Standards of Service, which are published and agreed with the Industry Regulator, Offgem. Where we fail to meet these standards, compensation is available to our customers.

'In this instance, ScottishPower has also decided to offer a further customer service payment as well, meaning that domestic customers will receive £150 and business customers will receive £250.'

But traders say these payments don"t go far enough.

Alloa"s Domino"s Pizzas had to bin a whole week"s worth of stock.

Zahid Hassan, the franchisee, said, 'There"s no chance the compensation being offered is enough, it won"t even cover the cost of the cheese we had to throw out - we lost over £3000 in stock.'

Neil McFarlane, owner of McFarlane Jewellers, agreed, 'To be honest, it"s a joke. On the eight days prior to Christmas I only had normal electricity for two days. ScottishPower should be offering to cover businesses loss of earnings over this.'

But, as things currently stand, no such offer is on the table and both the local MP Gordon Banks and MSP Keith Brown support the traders" demands for adequate recompense.

Gordon Banks said, 'The compensation being offered is grossly inadequate and ScottishPower have a moral obligation to review this.

'They need to speak to individual retailers to find out how much they have lost so they can make an adequate offer.

'This has happened at the busiest time of the year for shops in Clackmannanshire, and their inability to trade is unquestionably the responsibility of ScottishPower.'

Mr Brown added, 'I spoke to ScottishPower last week and told them that the initial compensation being offered wouldn"t be enough for the losses incurred.

'I told them that this couldn"t have happened at a worst time so they have agreed to look at each case on its merits and they deserve credit for showing willing to listen.'

Both Gordon Banks and Keith Brown are available to take up any individual cases.

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