Council argues EDF must do better to justify its higher fees

15 April 2009

Surrey County Council has taken energy giant EDF to task over its poor performance in repairing streetlights.

The council said it has been unhappy with EDF’s performance for some time and, despite committing to meeting targets set by OFGEM, the company has shown almost no improvement in the time taken to fix faults during the last year.

In January and February no emergency calls were responded to within two hours, against a target of 80%.

And in the same period no high priority faults were fixed within one day against a target of 50%.

Despite the poor performance, EDF has announced a hike in costs for streetlighting work this year of around 20%, without any notification or consultation.

David Lodge, chairman of the council’s transport select committee, said: ‘To impose significant cost increases on top of such a poor performance is totally unacceptable. The cost increases mean less work can get done elsewhere on Surrey’s road network.

'This, together with the poor delivery, means our residents are not getting the service they fully deserve.
‘All we can do is continue to put pressure on them and lobby OFGEM to do the same.’

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