Cadent have cut through the mains electric cable to our house

Hello stranger 👋 I often miss your measured responses to all sorts of questions.

What an awful situation to be in.

I always regarded UKPN as the best of the DNOs, largely because they have often proved helpful in awkward situations when others just say No.. You’re probably in the best of hands, although it’s sad they’re hampered by Cadent - not a good idea to be fiddling with electrical cables with gas on the loose. By all means complain bitterly to them - you’ll have fun getting them to compensate you for losses and disruption especially in the current climate.

Best of luck, old friend! 

Yep, will put in a complaint. 

The Cadent guys didn't instill confidence. 

The Cadent guy was smoking a cigarette when using the digger... and swearing to his mate... 

We now have 4 large UK Power Network vans and they have bought a digger and are currently digging up the road around where Cadent have been working. Can't fault their work ethic and keeping us informed. I am assuming they want to try and limit the same thing happening again. 

Morning ​@Jeffus, always good to hear from you, but the circumstances this time sound so frustrating 😑.

Cadent do have a complaints process which is detailed in this pdf guide. You can call their Customer Care Complaints team (8am-8pm, Mon-Fri) on 0800 389 8000, or email them at wecare@cadentgas.com. You can find out more on their website here. I’ve taken this from their complaints procedure:

If our Customer Service team or our local regional management are not able to reach a resolution with you, then you can escalate your complaint for review. We will investigate your complaint and the actions taken up to that point as part of the review. A response will be sent to you within 5 working days, or 10 working days where a site visit or third‐party enquiry is required. You can escalate your complaint by emailing with your complaint reference number customerescalations@cadentgas.com.

If necessary, you can also speak to the Ombudsman eventually, in the same way that you could with a complaint about your energy supplier. Hopefully your complaint with Cadent won’t get to that point, but just so you know, the option is there.

Let us know how you get on - it’ll be interesting to hear how they resolve this for you.

The HSE should be fining Cadent for either excavating without buried services records or, in the absence of those, they should only be excavating with manual tools to avoid the possibility if severing a live cable or other service. They were fortunate in only severing an LV cable instead of an HV cable which could have very easily caused injuries or deaths. You could report the issue to the HSE but I'm assuming that the DNO would have done that already.

Peter