DNO lack of action- is this common

baldelectrician · Jun 29, 2022

I had a client who had a poor lateral supply and called out the DNO in 2009, SP Energy Networks attended and marked it as an urgent upgrade.

She then called me about more work in February this year and told SP EN had not fixed the problem so she called again, someone looked and said the job would be booked in

They had a poor VIR lateral supply and high Ze reading.

Are DNO's lazy in their efforts ?

pc1966 · Jun 29, 2022

That is cable in an appalling condition!

I think a report to HSE is in order here.

Dartlec · Jun 29, 2022

I think it varies quite a bit with area, but also they seem to be doing a lot more 'fire fighting' (not literally), but fixing the high priority stuff, and anything not mega urgent tends to get put off.

They came out to a customer of mine immediately (late night) a few months back where there was no power, but as soon as they established it wasn't them they moved on sharpish. And happened to mention that the fuse head was old and might be replaced, but there was a 3 year waiting list at the time....

Pre Covid, I had a few reasonable experiences with them, with 'only' a several week wait for them to attend and remove an old rewireable fuse head.

Every time I've spoken to 105, I have at least spoken to someone who seems to understand the issue, but there have been some horror stories on here too.

I am usually asked to email photos now - and presumably someone is triaging the most urgent jobs...

baldelectrician · Jun 30, 2022

Dartlec said:
I think it varies quite a bit with area, but also they seem to be doing a lot more 'fire fighting' (not literally), but fixing the high priority stuff, and anything not mega urgent tends to get put off.

They came out to a customer of mine immediately (late night) a few months back where there was no power, but as soon as they established it wasn't them they moved on sharpish. And happened to mention that the fuse head was old and might be replaced, but there was a 3 year waiting list at the time....

Pre Covid, I had a few reasonable experiences with them, with 'only' a several week wait for them to attend and remove an old rewireable fuse head.

Every time I've spoken to 105, I have at least spoken to someone who seems to understand the issue, but there have been some horror stories on here too.

I am usually asked to email photos now - and presumably someone is triaging the most urgent jobs...

Have a thread on Twitter now, things happening

https://twitter.com/x/status/1542236628579717120

UNG · Jun 30, 2022

Never had any problems getting ENWL or SPEN (old MANWEB) to site to carry out work in fact on a couple of occassions I have tried to slow them down but they wouldn't have it

baldelectrician · Jun 30, 2022

UNG said:
Never had any problems getting ENWL or SPEN (old MANWEB) to site to carry out work in fact on a couple of occassions I have tried to slow them down but they wouldn't have it

Sp Energy Networks are hard to get to complete the jobs

They will attend and will tell the client the works are in a calendar but it will not get done

UNG · Jun 30, 2022

baldelectrician said:
Sp Energy Networks are hard to get to complete the jobs

They will attend and will tell the client the works are in a calendar but it will not get done

Most of the problems I have reported have been fixed on the day and the ones that haven't have been sorted within a few weeks, the only one that dragged on was a service head replacement on a looped supply that took about 9 months partly due to the neighbour being elderly and infirm and partly down SPEN insisting we arranged a date with the neighbour for the work to be carried out I pointed out that I didn't have access to their engineering diary which would make it rather difficult to arrange a mutually convienent date

baldelectrician · Jul 4, 2022

They came out and looked last Wednesday to run the laterals to next door and decided it was awkward to do this, the subcontractor suggested it was better to run a new cable from the street

I was then called back and told client refused trunking and job was posponed to do a dig - and the dig was planned maintenance

I called back (on conference call with the client) and raised concerns.

Someone called me back on Thursday afternoon and let me know they now planned to do the dig on Friday morning

The job was done last Friday - after a lot of running around.

Client is releived and happy