A POWER company has refused to pay compensation to victims of the floods in Cumbria. 

Electricity North West made a U-turn four days after saying it had set up a team to handle possible claims. The firm said 55,500 customers in Lancaster and 13,000 in Cumbria were affected when an electricity substation flooded in December.

Some 22,000 customers have since applied for compensation but Electricity North West has now said it does not intend to pay out. 

Martin Deehan, Electricity North West's operations director, said: “In cases of severe storms such as this, only customers without power continuously for 48 hours - starting when we can access our equipment - automatically qualify for payments.

"Having now analysed each claim, and thanks to the monumental effort of our engineers in extremely difficult circumstances, we do not believe that we have fallen below this standard.

“I understand that this is not the news that many had hoped for, and I apologise that due to the large number of enquiries, and the subsequent bad weather throughout the North West during December, it has taken us longer than we would have liked to get back to customers.

"We will be writing to each customer who has made a claim so that they can use our letter as evidence to claim for any losses as a result of the power cut through their insurance company.”

How was Cumbria's power supply affected by the floods?

13,000 properties in Cumbria experienced power cuts due to the flooding at a number of local substations. Power was restored to all possible properties within 48 hours (excluding those which were flooded and could not have power restored for safety reasons).