Helen calls for improved flood resilience after thousands lose power

Helen Morgan has urged the Government to work with utility companies to improve their resilience to extreme weather events, after thousands of homes in her constituency were left without power and water this week.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Helen highlighted the significant disruption caused by Storm Darragh over the weekend. Over 8,000 homes in North Shropshire were still without power on Monday and around 2,500 residents were still without electricity on Tuesday morning. Helen expressed her gratitude to the engineers working hard to restore services but raised concerns about the impact on essential infrastructure, including water booster pumps.

Residents in Wem experienced widespread water outages due to low pressure, with other parts of North Shropshire including Gobowen and Melverley also hit hard.

Helen has been in regular contact with both Severn Trent and Scottish Power, expressing particular concern for vulnerable people being left without water and electricity for prolonged periods.

Helen stressed that this high level of disruption happened despite North Shropshire being covered by a not-as-severe yellow weather warning, underlining the lack of resilience in the system.

Helen Morgan asked the Minister, “This morning there were still two and a half thousand people in North Shropshire without power. That is down from 8,000 yesterday morning, and I'm grateful to all the engineers who've worked so hard to get those people back online.

“But we also lost power to water booster pumps on Sunday, so a large area of North Shropshire experienced low water pressure. The town of Wem, which is sizeable, had large areas with no water at all. And this was despite it only being a yellow weather warning, so it really does feel as if the resilience of the utility companies isn't where it needs to be to respond to an event of this nature.

“Can she reassure me what she's doing with the utility companies to make sure that we are more resilient in future, because these events are going to happen more and more frequently as the impact of climate change worsens?

Abena Oppong-Asare MP, Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, replied, “I’d like to thank the Honourable Member for a question, and she's very right to raise that question. We are working very closely and our colleagues are working very closely in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and, as I mentioned earlier, are receiving updates in terms of energy network associations. If any of her constituents are directly affected by this, I would like to urge them to call the network operator directly by dialling 105 or visiting the Powercut 105 website. But she is right to say that we should be exploring how this could impact us in the future.”