Anne-Marie chaired a meeting in Belford on Friday evening between local residents, parish council representatives and Northern Powergrid, who were keen to update everyone on the work they have been doing to build resilience since Storm Arwen.
From Northern Powergrid were Paul Glendinning (Policy and Markets Director) and Victoria Dove (Stakeholder Relations Team). Helen Hinds, Northumberland County Council's Business, Resilience and Emergency Planning Lead also attended.
Improvements to measures which failed in the aftermath of Storm Arwen - such as call centre capacity - were outlined.
The MP, who has been regularly meeting Northern Powergrid and Scottish Power since last year's storms, welcomed the improved works, and the engagement with communities.
"I am really pleased Northern Powergrid is making these improvements to build resilience, not only in the power systems themselves, but in the communications and handling of the aftermath. So many of us could not get through to report our outages, or receive accurate information on repairs. I am hopeful the improvements made will be noticeable come the next major storm, and I welcome the work being done with parish councils to supply emergency generators."
Anne-Marie has been supporting parish councils and other community groups in bidding for funding from Northern Powergrid's £7.5m community resilience fund, to supply generators and other useful tools to support communities in the event of future power outages.
Any parish councils and community groups who have not yet considered a bid are welcome to do so and seek the MP's support in their applications.
Helen Hinds spoke about how Northumberland County Council has improved their procedures including better co-ordination with other agencies. The Local Resilience Forum (LRF) is taking the lead on this, looking at the issues of data sharing which does create difficulties but she is hopeful that this will be overcome. The LRF is also working with the power companies to ensure the vulnerable persons register is accurate and up to date.
Another similar meeting is being held in Rothbury this evening at 18:00 in the Jubilee Hall.