120 new poles coming to Audlem

Audlem parish councillors received a detailed and highly informative briefing from Steve Allcock of Scottish Power at Monday evening's Council meeting about major upgrades to the local electricity supply.

This will involve installing 120 new cable carrying poles in the Paddock Lane, Kettle Lane, parts of Woore Road, Whitchurch Road and Green Lane areas. The old poles require replacing and modern safer cables also need to be installed.

Over the coming days, AudlemOnline will be bringing you further details of the work schedule which will involve some road closures and diversions, traffic lights and electricity being switched off for periods in affected areas.

Steve has kindly forwarded to AudlemOnline a letter giving the background to the work which will be sent to households giving details of the advance notice that affected residents will receive. It says:

Refurbishment of electricity distribution network in your area

Dear customer
As part of SP Energy Networks ongoing commitment to improving the condition of the electricity network serving your area, I would like to give you advanced notification of our intention to carry out construction works in the Audlem area during the first three months of 2013.

The existing overhead lines supplying Audlem are now nearly 50 years old and as well as being at the end of their serviceable life, they do not conform to modern standards. They need to either be replaced or significantly repaired. This is part of a multi-million pound expenditure programme that SP Energy Networks has embarked on across its entire operating area in and in the case for Audlem we will be spending £330,000 to upgrade the system.

Our aim is to improve the quality and reliability of the network serving all our customers and reduce the number of faults that occur and the time that it takes us to repair these faults.

The initial survey stage of the Audlem project has been completed with detailed designs now ready to allow work on site to proceed. We are also in discussion with relevant bodies such as the Highways agency with regards to traffic impact during the construction phase of these important works.

Unfortunately during construction, and to allow us to do this work safely, we will need to switch off electricity supplies from time to time. The delivery programme will be planned carefully to minimise the number of interruptions we need to undertake and to ensure that we carry out as much work as possible each time the power is shut down.

You will be notified by letter of any scheduled interruption affecting you personally nearer the time. We will give you ten days notification of these events to allow you to prepare for this. Also we will need to manage the traffic flow in and around Audlem to allow for the works to be undertaken, again, in a safe manner.

We realise that these works will cause inconvenience to you, our customers, so please accept our apologies for the disruption that may affect you. We will do our utmost to minimise this and we will keep you informed of electricity shutdowns that need to occur. Should you have any questions regarding the works we plan to undertake please call 0845 270 0788 or write to us using the e-mail address customer.care@sppowersystems.com and we will hopefully be able to address any concerns you have.
Yours sincerely
Steve Allcock
Project Manager

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