Wednesday, 4 March 2020

Croydon electorate energy supply

Mr HODGETT (Croydon) (09:51): I draw to the government’s attention the unreliable power supply along Niel Street, Croydon. Over summer, when the weather has been over 40 degrees, for a few hours the houses in Niel Street, Croydon, lose their power overnight and into the morning. We are talking about 187 houses losing power every time there is a very hot day, and when there are consecutive hot days residents lose their power for consecutive nights. Residents inform me that the outage checker shows that this group of 187 houses and one other area in Croydon are always the ones to lose power. This ongoing situation is totally unacceptable. We are not talking about the inconvenience of a one-off blackout; we are talking about numerous blackouts on every 40-degree hot day. As one resident points out, electricity is an essential service. We pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the world and this is unacceptable.

The same resident raises very serious concerns for her neighbours’ health: elderly residents, including one who is in their late 80s; an older resident who has many health issues and who nearly had to call an ambulance because the heat made them sick; an older resident going through chemotherapy for stage 4 cancer; two premature babies—twins—who had been home only a couple of days; a disabled person who had to sit in their car for 2½ hours to cool down; and her health, because she has a chronic illness that is exacerbated by heat and an inability to cool down.

On top of this residents have also experienced damaged electrical goods due to the regular power outages. I call on the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change to investigate this issue, to do the right thing and commit to fixing the problem and fix the reason these residents continue to suffer from unreliable power supply on very hot days.