GREAT Paxton residents have been told they will not be getting any compensation despite suffering from on-and-off power cuts for six days. Some residents have complained that it is unfair that EDF Energy will only pay compensation when the power is off co

GREAT Paxton residents have been told they will not be getting any compensation despite suffering from on-and-off power cuts for six days.

Some residents have complained that it is unfair that EDF Energy will only pay compensation when the power is off continuously for 18 hours.

The electricity supplier admits that a fault on an underground cable at 6.49am on Thursday, February 19, interrupted supplies to 503 customers. The fault took a week to fully repair but EDF said supplies to homes were restored within a day.

However, Craig Wallace, 41, from Bishop's Way, says he - and other residents - should be compensated for lost working time. He also wants compensation for his computer equipment which he says was damage by the outage.

Mr Wallace told The Hunts Post that there was also suspected damage to his solar panels.

He said that the original disruption had taken 16 hours to restore.

"The next day the power was off again from 5.45pm for three hours. On the Saturday morning it went off yet again from 6am to 11am and then again from 2pm."

Mr Wallace said the emergency generator set up to reconnect the supply had been "under-powered" for the job and had cut out at 6pm on the Friday night.

He said: "On the following Tuesday morning at 7am (February 24) the generator blew up because a fan belt snapped and it took nine hours to replace it."

Mr Wallace said his wife, Wendy, worked as a book-keeper from home and had lost two days' work as a result of the power-cut.

"You can change your electricity supplier but you can't change the distributor. EDF has us over a barrel. I am disappointed at the response I have had from EDF, pilchards in a tin would have been treated better."

An EDF spokesman apologised to customers for the power cut.

"Our engineers managed to restore power supplies to 419 customers between 10.48am and 11.40am, and the remaining supplies were restored by 10.22pm the same day, using generators as further lengthy repair work was required.

"The repairs were completed and the generators were removed on Friday (February 27) when supplies were restored via the normal network."

The spokesman added: "We can't offer compensation as such. Like all power distribution companies we operate to guaranteed standards set by our regulator, Ofgem, which sets the level of payments and when those would apply. These wouldn't apply in this case.

"We do understand how much disruption lengthy faults such as this can cause and offer our sincere apologies.