Wycombe and Marlow MP Paul Goodman has written to the head of Southern Electric demanding answers after desperate residents from the Goodwood rise area of Marlow Bottom appealed for help to deal with the sporadic power cuts they’d been suffering.

 

Paul said: ‘This is a very serious problem and the company is obliged to do something about it as soon as possible. People will believe it’s unacceptable [that nothing has been done so far] and I see their point of view.’

 

He added: ‘No one at the company appears to be in charge. Clearly something has gone wrong at management level and it’s important to find out what.’

 

In his letter to Ian Marchant, chief Executive of Scottish and Southern Electricity, Paul demanded to know when the fault would be repaired and why it was taking so long to solve the problem.

 

Up to 150 households suffered 19 hours of power failure between the end of January and middle of February – with power cuts usually lasting two hours but in one case six hours. Residents were particularly upset by the fact that most of the power cuts took place in the afternoon and early evening when they preparing their meal.

 

Southern Electric apologised to residents and said that they were doing all they could to locate the fault. The company said that they hoped to be able to solve the problem by reconfiguring the network.