Power Company mislead Member of Parliament

Powerco have mislead the Member of Parliament for Tauranga, Hon Simon Bridges in regard to its consultation process over a planned outage to a shopping centre in Tauranga scheduled for this coming Sunday.

Powerco an electricity lines company providing power to Tauranga has chosen to shut down a seven day trading shopping centre in Cherrywood Tauranga. Four businesses that would normally be open for trading, will be shut down from 8.30am to 4pm this Sunday. The planned shutdown is to replace electrical switch gear.

Powerco are the only power delivery company serving Tauranga. The company head office is based in New Plymouth which delivers the Tauranga power for the retailers, Trust Power, Mercury Energy, Genesis and others.

Suzanne Edmonds , partner in the Restaurant RSVP of Cherrywood, Tauranga, said from Tauranga today “For planned outages such as the one for the Cherrywood shops in Tauranga, it would be reasonable to expect consultation before the details were finalised to enable the impact on affected parties to be considered.”

On Friday 5 August when Mrs Edmonds heard of the shutdown she contacted Powerco. She spoke to Powerco on 3 different occasions before 1.30pm that day, trying to find out what was happening and to request Powerco, at the least, put on a generator for the shopping block.

Following Powerco’s refusal to consider any alternative arrangements, a letter requesting assistance was then sent to Tauranga’s Member of Parliament, Hon Simon Bridges and His Worship the Mayor, Stuart Crosby and signed by the four affected shop owners.

Mr Bridges said in his letter to Powerco “On behalf of the shop owners I urge you to consult with them as a matter of urgency”

In response Powerco stated to Mr Bridges “ In the case of the shutdown you refer to we have spoken with Ms Edmonds several times in the past two weeks and explained what we propose to do and why we advised that Powerco does not own or operate generators in house and offered to put her in touch with a generator provider and provide technical advice”

Mrs Edmonds added “This is a direct misrepresentation to our member of Parliament as no consultation process has taken place with any of us at all. In the letter to Mr Bridges in Powerco are essentially blaming the retailers of the power, although they do not suggest that either the lines distributor or the retailer have an obligation to consult”.

Mrs Edmonds claims she has not had any discussion with Powerco or any other power company since 5 August 2011. She also claims that consultation should be standard process and is a reasonable expectation.

When the project was being planned months ago a consultation with commercial customers would have been expected as normal business practice.