NORTHERN POWERGRID customers are growing increasingly frustrated with the company as they try to claim the compensation they are due.

After receiving compensation cheques made payable to the wrong name or with the incorrect compensation amount, customers have contacted Northern Powergrid with this information and are becoming increasingly frustrated with the company's responses.

Northern Powergrid said they have issued compensation cheques to the vast majority of eligible customers, a total which amounted to around 30,000 customers.

An update posted on Thursday, January 13 on their website said: "Of the 24,000 cheques we issued, we have received around 1,600 queries and we’re working through them on a case-by-case basis. Around 1,800 customers have asked us to make out their cheque in a different name and over 1,300 are already processed. The rest are expected to be done by the middle of this week."

"The increase in Covid cases has affected the number of people we have at work, so please bear with us."

Carole McCourt, a resident of Allenheads, said: "I've been completely frustrated with this whole situation from the lack of communication and support during our 12 day power outage due to the chaotic management issuing the cheques and reimbursing expenses."

"I’m actually on the priority list and we weren’t even offered a generator," she said.

Northern Powergrid offered Carole's family a hotel but with a household of three adults, two dogs and the fact they were snowed in, this wasn’t possible.

Sandra Towler, a Hexham resident, said: "We didn’t apply for the compensation as we were on the priority list with Northern Powergrid. There were just two houses in our postcode that lost power for 10 days. We learnt that our neighbour received his payment before Christmas and so we rang the contact number to make sure they had all our correct details on Wednesday, January 5."

"We were told that the cheque would take two weeks to be issued and when we queried this, we were told technically Northern Powergrid had a 12 month window to make the compensation payments but they were trying to pay them as soon as they could."

A spokesperson for Northern Powergrid said: "We have issued thousands of compensation payments and despite our best efforts we know with an event of this scale and complexity there may be some cases or power cut records that will need to be confirmed with customers."

"Whilst it is not appropriate to comment on individual cases in the media, we are aware of a number of cases in Northumberland and County Durham where additional compensation may be due and we can reassure customers we are actively investigating them and will liaise directly with customers affected."

"Where any additional compensation is due, we will of course ensure they - and any other customers who had the same power cut - are fully compensated."

"We’re sorry for the difficulties our customers' are experiencing. Our teams remain focused on resolving all compensation queries as soon as we can and we thank our customers for their ongoing patience."

After appealing her compensation amount, on Tuesday, January 11, Carole was contacted by Northern Powergrid who apologised for the situation and said they had correctly issued another cheque and their engineers were investigating the additional expenses.