The only time we get loss of neutral on our network in the North West is on certain type of mains cable (consac) its renown for it. The reason being that under the pvc the neutral/earth is full aluminium and as soon as water tracks in the aliminium oxidises over time and the neutral breaks down. The newer cables we install although they are cheap the neutral/earth's are split strands of copper and the odds over half of those strands corroding is very very low. In 12 years of being a jointer I have never worked on a neutral fault that didn't revolve around a consac main. We are however looking at a huge issue over the next few years with cables running above there capacity with the introduction of electric charging points and the amount of appliances in every home these days. The network is old and no one is willing to pay the money to update it. Everything is reactive maintenance in my industry not preventative.I genuinely don't know how to quantify this one. It comes up fairly often on here and I've raised it before too. If it happens, it's certainly a nightmare scenario.
But stats seem to suggest we are taking around 500 occurrences in about 25 million properties in a year. So chances of any given property having this issue are mathematically miniscule. As new builds are almost all PME and more supplies are converted the number of incidents are bound to marginally increase as there are simply more out there.
Thing is, we don't tell people they might die crossing the road to go and buy the beer to have in the hot tub even though it is far more likely. Thoughts welcome!