HOUSEHOLDERS in north Stroud deserve a better service from their electricity provider and are fed up with winter power cuts year after year, says their county councillor.

Cllr Anthony Blackburn (Con, North Stroud) has written to the managing director of energy supplier E.On and the chief regulator of Ofgem, the regulatory body for gas and electricity markets, to complain about the poor service his constituents in Whiteshill and Randwick have received in recent years.

In a strongly-worded letter, Cllr Blackburn says the electricity provider should always give warnings if a power cut is needed to carry out work.

"I put this forward on behalf of residents who like me are paying 20-30 per cent more for our electricity than 18 months ago and in the case of the power cuts receiving nil service," he writes.

Cllr Blackburn also criticised the company for not being aware of which areas and systems are particularly vulnerable and says it should anticipate problems in winter and take steps to reinforce or replace equipment after it has failed once.

An Ofgem spokesman told the SNJ that the organisation had not yet received Cllr Blackburn’s letter but confirmed that an electricity network company should provide its customers with prior notice, of not less than two days, informing them of a planned interruption to their electricity supply.

"Where this notice is not given within the set timeframe then the customer may be entitled to a compensation payment, which they need to make a claim for from their network company," he said.

A spokesman for E.On said: 'We will be responding to Mr Blackburn directly and we recognise his concerns but the outages that he mentions were caused by completely different faults on both the overhead and underground networks."