British MPs to quiz power company chiefs on Christmas power outages -Telegraph

(Reuters) - Members of Britain's parliament are set to summon the chiefs of energy network companies over the slow pace of restoring power services after a Christmas storm, The Daily Telegraph reported, quoting the chairman of the parliamentary energy committee. Floods caused by strong storm winds on Christmas eve had knocked out power services in many parts of Britain, with many customers remaining without electricity for almost five days. "I'm very concerned about how long the network distribution companies took to restore power to thousands of customers. The Committee will call them in when the House gets back," chairman of the parliamentary energy committee, Tim Yeoh was quoted by the newspaper as saying. The parliamentary energy committee is required to agree with Yeo's plan, but the newspaper said that permission would be given at a meeting early in the new year. The Chief executive of UK Power Networks, one of Britain's biggest electricity distributors said that its response had been too slow and said it would pay almost triple compensation to households left without power over Christmas. (Reporting by Tasim Zahid in Bangalore; editing by Andrew Hay)