Haltwhistle homeowners face £80k bill to get electric supply

Jul 30 2010 by Paul Tully, The Journal

But Network Rail and CE Electric have told him that the law – a section of the Electricity Connection Charges Regulations 2002 – dictates the five-year exclusion clause.

A spokesman for CE Electric said: “If we propose to use existing assets that another customer had paid for in order to provide a new connection, the customer requesting the new connection may need to pay towards the costs.

“Charges for such works only apply where the new connection is provided within five years of the original assets also being provided.”

Allendale-born Lee, who has returned North after 22 years living in the South, added: “Every time we take a step forward we have to take three steps back.

“The electric would be 100ft away across the road and we thought it would cost about £1,500 to dig the road and come across, which wouldn’t have been too bad a problem.

“We were thinking ‘great – we’re going to get electric in’, but then they told us about the clawback law and therefore we have to pay.

“But we can’t. You hear about pollution, and here we are having to use 800 litres of diesel every three months on noisy generators.

“It just doesn’t make sense.”