Service update
We want to keep customers informed of the service situation across the UK now that the holiday period is coming to an end and as more extreme weather is forecast today.
Over the last two weeks high winds, heavy rain and flooding have battered the UK and this week we’ve seen more of the same, with very wet and windy conditions for many across the country on New Year’s Day and through Thursday 2 January.
The government has warned of “exceptional weather” to hit the UK today and over the weekend. The Environment Agency has issued 21 severe flood warnings – which mean “danger to life” – affecting south-west England, Gloucestershire and Wales and the Met Office has warned of flooding in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Many of the severe flood warnings relate to the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, and there is also warning of further storms through today (Friday) and into Sunday, with the potential to be “a significant weather event”, as strong winds and large waves coincide with high tides There are around 500 warnings for rain, high winds and flooding in place today.
Over the holiday period, we have seen around 20,000 more faults than our original plan with considerable damage to both above and below ground infrastructure. The fault intake is likely to increase further over the coming weekend and into next week following the severe weather and also when most businesses and consumers will have returned from their Christmas and New Year breaks.
This morning (Friday) the overall repair work stack stands at around 38,000. We expect to see this peak at around 40,000 by the middle of next week before falling to around 35,000 by next Friday.
On our current plan, we are looking at being back under 30,000, by the end of the following week, (w/c 13 January) as we recover in most areas of the country. However, Wessex, which has been the most seriously impacted region over the holiday period, saw the repair work stack peaking at a national equivalent level of 70,000, and is likely to take a little longer to recover.
As we said in the last update, the planning we put in place prior to the holiday period ensured we had people available in the field over Christmas week and even with the bank holidays and the weather difficulties, we saw over 90,000 completions.
This week we have also been stepping up to meet the challenges, with record number of engineers working over the New Year holiday and we made around 115,000 completions. Over the holiday period we have also managed to keep on-time repair at around 70%.
Next week we are fielding enough capacity to complete over 175,000 completions, but we expect that to be eroded by continued access issues to villages and towns and also the huge level of movement needed to get engineers to the hardest hit areas.
While we are in this recovery period, and as the conditions continue to be challenging, repair will obviously continue to be our main focus. In some areas of the UK we need to flex our provision lead times to ensure we bring customers back into service as quickly as possible.
With the high winds and flooding, we need to ensure safety of our people and your customers continues to take precedence.
Despite this focus on repair, lead-times for provision appointments have been held within 12 working days nationally, with ranges between 6 and 14 working days at GM patch level.
As a reminder, it would be really helpful to us if you could please make use of all electronic tracking and reporting tools, continue to highlight the Emergency Welfare process to your teams and ask your own customers to report any damage they see to our network at www.openreach.co.uk/reportdamageor www.openreach.co.uk/contactus. We will also keep you informed of any need to re-appoint your customers as part of the agreed process.
The situation is fluid and we are constantly reassessing the latest position. We will hold weekly service calls through the recovery and will issue a further update on Tuesday next week when we see the effects of the weekend storms and also as the majority of people have returned home and businesses re-opened.
Meanwhile thank you for your support over the Christmas and New Year holiday period.
Regards
Openreach Communications
