Mr. Nicholas Tarrant:

The issue has a couple of dimensions but the most important one is access to the network. There are restrictions as to when outages can be taken on the transmission network and that depends on the time of year. At times of high demand on the system one wants to keep as much of the electricity network available to meet the needs of customers at that time. With a high demand period over the winter one tends to minimise outages, which can have an impact as to when one can connect or do work on the transmission system or even the distribution system. We view the transmission outage programme as a window over the spring, through the summer and into the autumn. A huge amount of work is still done during the winter period. For example, we expect a lot of commissioning activity to take place as we approach the renewable electricity support scheme or RESS 1 auction deadline at the end of next year.

In terms of hours of work and that kind of issue, we operate 24-7 and we have an on-call rota that gets customers back on supply. We also have network technicians, supervisors, engineering officers and engineers who work every day to connect people to the network. They do lots of other work around maintenance, new projects and in many other areas.