RURAL residents and businesses who have experienced 14 power cuts in the space of 18 months summoned representatives from Northern Powergrid to a public meeting at Edmundbyers village hall.

After being left without heating, hot water and cooking facilities for almost 32 hours in total due to the persistent power outages between July 2014 and January 2016, many residents in the village and surrounding communities of Blanchland and Hunstanworth were demanding answers.

Among them was Edmundbyers resident Martyn Harvey, who moved to the village five years ago after living in Orkney and rural Sweden.

“Villagers are almost totally dependent on electricity for all their amenities including central heating, hot water, cooking facilities, telephones and computers,” he told the meeting.

“During this last winter my wife and I got fed up with the number of power cuts we had ... and we have lived in much more rural locations than this.

“We asked the Northern Powergrid helpline to tell us how many cuts we‘d had.”

He was told that power failures ranging in length of time from a few minutes up to 17 hours were affecting around two to three hundred properties on each occasion.

Martyn added: “Our local businesses have lost significant custom. We live in a 21st century world and we have to put up with a 19th century service.”

Among those at the meeting were Mark and Lorna Brown, who took over the village pub, the Punch Bowl Inn, at the beginning of December and have been faced with cancelling whole afternoons of Sunday lunch bookings due to the power supply problems.

Lorna explained: “The first weekend we took over we were thrown into the deep end because the power was off in the whole village and there was nothing we could do about it.

“But we took the positives from it and got the candles and log fires going to heat up water.

“We ended up getting to know a lot of the local people who were coming into the pub rather than sitting in darkness at home.”

Northern Powergrid’s area manager for Northumberland and Durham, Jeff Hunter, agreed the service was “unacceptable” but reassured residents that the company was aware of the issue.

“The village is fed by overhead lines, which can be vulnerable to more problems, but are quicker and easier to fix,” said Mr Hunter.

“The villages affected are also on the tail end of the supply and there is only one feed in, with not a lot of other options for creating a back-up.”

He added that around £500,000 had already been spent on rebuilding the main overhead lines into the area.

He said so-called “intelligent” fuses had also been installed to detect and isolate the location of the problem within the network.

An analysis of the losses of power pinpointed that the majority were due to problems with overhead cables which run through an area of trees near to the A68.

Customer liaison officer Kevin Parkin, who was also present at the meeting, admitted that the company could have communicated better with residents over the issue.

He also confirmed that compensation was payable for all power cuts over 12 hours at a rate of £100 for residential addresses and £150 for businesses.

It is hoped the problem trees will be removed by the end of April.