Engineers worked day and night to restore supplies, and we provided more than 22,000 free meals to people in affected areas through our catering vehicles.

Compensation payment rules are in place for network operators covering standards of service that are guaranteed to customers. However, during extreme events, it is accepted that the exceptional circumstances can hamper efforts to restore power. This is the case with Storm Desmond.

Martin Deehan, Electricity North West Operations Director, said: “In cases of severe storms such as this, only customers without power continuously for 48 hours - starting when we can access our equipment - automatically qualify for payments.

"Having now analysed each claim, and thanks to the monumental effort of our engineers in extremely difficult circumstances, we do not believe that we have fallen below this standard.

“I understand that this is not the news that many had hoped for, and I apologise that due to the large number of enquiries, and the subsequent bad weather throughout the North West during December, it has taken us longer than we would have liked to get back to customers.

"We will be writing to each customer who has made a claim so that they can use our letter as evidence to claim for any losses as a result of the power cut through their insurance company.”

• Flood defences at Lancaster’s main substation on Caton Road had been upgraded with a £500k investment in 2010 to withstand a 1-in-100 year flood.
• 55,000 properties in Lancaster and the surrounding area lost power at 11pm on Saturday 5 December when those flood defences were breached.
• Engineers were unable to access the substation to begin repairs until 9.30am on Sunday 6 December. Power was restored at 6.30am on Monday 7 December although supplies were later lost again due to damage caused by the flood water to equipment inside the substation.
• 13,000 properties in Cumbria experienced power cuts due to the flooding at a number of local substations. Power was restored to all possible properties within 48 hours (excluding those which were flooded and could not have power restored for safety reasons).