Huncoat residents left without heating (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Huncoat residents left without heating

12:00pm Friday 5th October 2012 in News

RESIDENTS have been left without heating and hot water since Tuesday after road works affected a block of flats.

Mains gas works in Woodside Road, off Bolton Avenue in Huncoat, have affected around 12 households in flats in Elder Court.

Residents have described attempts to get the supply renewed as ‘a shambles’.

Andrew Kimberley, 38, said gas was turned off without notification, affecting residents which included his disabled and elderly neighbours.

He said they made repeated calls to National Grid this week but were told the work to reconnect their gas supply was already completed according to their computer system.

He said: “They can’t just switch gas off without any notification. People were getting two main excuses - one was that the work was already listed as finished, which it clearly wasn’t. Other people were getting told that they were unable to get access to homes, which couldn’t have been true because some were housebound people at home all day.

“I am sure that they may have struggled getting into some homes. But they didn’t get in touch with us in advance and they haven’t posted any notes through as to when they were coming back.

“For people like me it’s just been a huge annoyance, but it’s the older people and people who disabled I feel sorry for. Everyone agrees it’s been a huge shambles.”

A spokeswoman for National Grid said they expected supply to return back to normal for the majority of flats by today.

She said: “Our engineers expected to get flats on by yesterday (thur) afternoon. Engineers will visit again today to try again to contact the residents we haven't been able to reach.

“The difficulty with this job has been making contact with the residents and arranging for them to be in or to give us access to complete our works.

“We've replaced the gas main in the street and also the pipe which takes gas from the main up to individual meters but we've needed to get access to all properties to complete the job.”

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