Properties to get electric supply safety checks

Inspectors are to visually inspect energy suppliers' equipment

Plymouth residents are to get electric supply safety checks as part of an inspection programme, National Grid says.

The utility provider said some domestic and small business customers in the PL1 postcode, including the city centre, Stoke and Devonport areas, were to be visited by approved contractors from 22 October to check "service termination points [known as cut-outs] inside properties are working as they should".

Bosses said inspectors would visually check energy suppliers' equipment and record basic details.

No disassembly work would be carried out and power supplies would not be interrupted while inspections occurred, they added.

The cut-outs were the indoor location where the main incoming electricity service cable and fuse was situated, in most cases close to the electricity meter, the energy distributor said.

For most modern properties built since the 1980s, the cut-out was situated in a meter cabinet on the outside, although it could be located within the property next to the electricity meter or the customer's consumer unit, it said.

In the unlikely event of a defective cut-out being found, engineers would be sent to carry out repairs at no cost to the customer, bosses said.

The inspections would be part of work to carry out 400,000 inspections of cut-outs in homes and small businesses across the Midlands, South West and South Wales every year in a rolling programme over the next 20 years, they added.