OREANDA-NEWS. Jeremy Hunt, MP for South West Surrey, has met with Southern Electric Power Distribution’s Head of Operations, Bev Keogh, on site at Godalming in Surrey to see first hand the work our tree-cutting teams are doing to make the local network as robust and resilient as possible.

We were keen to show Mr Hunt the work we have been doing in his constituency since last summer. Surrey was one of the counties worst hit during the storms which battered the UK over Christmas 2013 and early 2014, with gale force winds bringing down trees which damaged our network and caused power cuts.

Over the past nine months we have invested over ?16m to ensure that trees and vegetation are kept clear of our power lines, and this meeting was set up to let Mr Hunt meet Bev and teams who have been working hard day-in, day-out on the project.

Bev explains: “Surrey is a beautiful part of the country, with picturesque rural communities who are proud of the local landscape, including its many forests and country estates. This has presented us with a real challenge when we’ve been planning our extensive tree-cutting programme, as these communities are worried about losing their trees.

"Over the past year we have been meeting with parish councils, resilience groups and landowners to explain why we need to cut the trees, and stress the risk of power cuts if the trees are allowed to keep growing ever closer to our overhead lines. On the whole these meetings have been really positive, and since the project started we have been able to clear away trees on over 41km of our network across Surrey.

"I wanted to make sure that we had members of the project team on site too, as sharing their experiences with Mr Hunt gives him a real flavour of the challenges they’ve been facing as they work to keep the lights on for his constituents.”

Speaking after his visit, Mr Hunt said: “It was very interesting to see the results of the complex programme of tree clearing and maintenance in Godalming which SEPD has undertaken over the last year.

"As one of the members of the Waverley Infrastructure Resilience Group which was founded in early 2014 in order to protect the area from severe weather in the future, SEPD has worked hard to address the problems of prolonged power cuts which arose at the time.

"Clearly this particular initiative is indicative of SEPD's continued commitment to improve their service and protect against future power cuts in the area.”