Beginning to look a lot like winter

If you walked into work this morning you’ll know it’s cold. And if you’re working outside today you’ll certainly know it’s cold. The weather is bitterly cold – in single figures and dropping below zero overnight – and dry.

A prolonged period of cold, wintery weather can have a significant impact on the amount of gas emergency work we deal with, and the weather gives us a challenge we have to face every year.

With a succession of mild winters since 2012, while we’ve taken precautions, things have been comparatively quiet.

Early indications are however that things may be a bit different this year.

Yesterday was our busiest day since February 2012. Today looks like it’s going to go the same way, as traditionally Thursday’s are our busiest day of the week anyway, so we’re now invoking part of our Winter Resource Plan.

This involves using other colleagues (like our Network Services teams who maintain the control systems of the gas network) to do work that our emergency engineers usually do alongside responding to gas emergencies

It also means that we cancel non urgent work and call in colleagues on overtime. Last year, to support our engineers we trained additional staff to respond to gas leaks. If the weather and workload continues as is – or the demand on our services intensifies, we can call on them to support our engineers and make sure that we keep our customers safe – a priority for us.

So I’d like to wish all the best to our engineers and managers all doing what they can to keep communities from Wrexham to Redruth safe over the next few, cold days and remind the 7.5m people we serve that if you do smell gas, or suspect the presence of carbon monoxide call the gas emergency service on 0800 111 999 and we will be there at any time of day or night.

Clive.