Businesses on busy Derry shopping street losing thousands of pounds as a result of repeated power cuts

Traders on a busy shopping street in Derry’s Waterside say they have lost thousands of pounds in revenue due to continuing power cuts which have recently plagued the area.

In one incident, a power outage on Spencer Road resulted in a busy bar and restaurant being closed for a full day while another establishment was forced to send its customers home while they were in the middle of their meals.

One of the worst affected by the power cuts has been The Ritz Bar and Bistro, which was hit with four major power cuts in the space of a week, two of which happened on the same day.

The first occurred on Tuesday, November 23, which was followed by another outage in the early hours of Friday, November 25.

The premises suffered another power cut just hours later shortly after 12 noon, which resulted in The Ritz being unable to serve lunches.

However, the worst power cut occurred the following day, on Saturday, November 26.

That outage began at 10.00am and lasted until after midnight, meaning that the business had to close for the day and cancel a function which had been booked.

A number of other businesses on the Spencer Road were also affected by the same power cut,

Speaking to the Derry News, Marie Donnelly, the owner of The Ritz, said that they had lost thousands of pounds as a result of the power cuts, and hit out at Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) for their handling of the matter.

She added the power cut on Saturday, November 26, had been particularly bad for business.

“We thought it was bad enough the day before when we couldn’t serve lunch on Black Friday, which would have been extremely busy for us,” she said.

“The Saturday was terrible though, because we had the Ireland rugby match and function, but all that had to be cancelled which resulted in a substantial loss for us.

“What’s really frustrating is having to deal with two different agencies when reporting the fault, NI Networks and Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE), and we were just getting bounced between the two of them.”

Mrs Donnelly added she was then informed the power cuts had been caused by what was described to her as a “very old cable” spanning Spencer Road.

“The cable was found to be very badly worn and had to be patched in three places,” she added.

“The other thing is that NIE didn’t even know about the fault until we contacted them, because there’s no grid here whereby it would be flagged up to them if there was a power cut.”

She added the most NIE could compensate her for a power cut lasting 12 hours was £125.

“There were so many other complications too, because due to the interruption to our power supply we had to get a new CCTV camera and our shutters fixed, which cost £100 alone.”

Mrs Donnelly added that she was now anxious about future interruptions to the power supply.

“The following day after the last cut we were putting on the lunches and I actually said a prayer that we would get through the day without interruption,” she continued.

“NIE need to carry out routine checks on that cable or replace it, because there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen again, and we as their customers need some sort of reassurance here that they’re doing all they can to address this.”

Her comments were echoed by Erin McDevitt, proprietor of Nonnas Wood Fired Pizzas, who suffered a power cut while customers were enjoying their meals.

“It would have been on the same day (Saturday, November 26), and we had to send our customers home,” she said.

“We then had to ring around and cancel all the bookings for that night, and that was the second time we were hit with a power cut that month.

“The power came back on after midnight but then went off again at 2am, because I had to come back down as the fire brigade were outside the building.”

The issue came to light at a meeting of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Environment and Regeneration Committee, at which councillors heard from senor figures from NIE.

Speaking at the meeting, the SDLP’s Martin Reilly called on the electricity supplier to investigate the problem further given the amount of revenue lost by traders as a result.

Responding, Con Feeney, Network Performance and Safety Director with NIE, apologised for the fault and said that he would “follow up the specifics” of the problem.