This briefing is applicable to all WLR and LLU Communications Providers

Exceptionally heavy rain over the past few weeks caused severe flooding across many parts of the UK. This had an enormous impact on fault levels and on Openreach's subsequent ability to protect and repair the network in areas where access to plant became severely restricted. In many areas Openreach was forced to declare matters beyond our reasonable control (MBORC) / force majeure event - the first of which was issued in the North after the first heavy rainfalls in late June.

This briefing is to summarise the current position and also to give an overview of what actually happened.

The severe weather that followed over the weekend of the 21st - 22nd July caused yet more flooding and further MBORC notifications were issued for Central and Western England. Our single fault levels in these areas peaked at around 60% higher than we would normally expect at this time of year. Faults that required a complex engineering solution also rose dramatically, with the total in the flooded areas being over three times higher than mid June 2007. These complex faults were particularly challenging due to the number of street cabinets affected; 166 cabinets required repair at the peak and over 5,400 end users were affected.

Over 200 extra Openreach people were deployed to the flood areas to reduce fault levels as quickly as possible and to check and repair plant as soon as access to flooded areas became available. We also sourced additional stocks of high capacity cables at short notice and focused resource on these faults.

Preventative action was also taken, ranging from temporarily raising joints in external boxes above water levels to re-routing key circuits to provide an alternative route that did not include cables at risk from flooding. A dedicated freephone number was communicated to allow emergency services to report priority faults that, if not restored quickly, would place vital services at risk. In Gloucestershire, where some of the worst flooding took place, Openreach engineers worked very closely with the security forces, for example, distributing mobile telephones to vulnerable end users based on prioritised needs identified by and agreed with the security forces and public authorities. There have also been several instances where prompt actions by our engineers protected Openreach equipment, pre-empting fault conditions occurring.

In just two weeks after the July rainfall, single and complex fault volumes in some of the flood affected areas had been reduced to normal levels. Throughout this period we tried to keep Communications Providers informed and reviewed the status of the MBORC declarations on a regular basis with a view to lifting them individually as soon as appropriate. The last flood related MBORCs were removed on the 6th August 2007.

Work is already underway to re-examine and, if necessary, replace plant that has been affected by flooding. This will mitigate the risk of premature ageing of cabinets and joints that could otherwise occur in the future. We will also not lose sight of fault repair requirements as end users return to their homes and business premises.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your patience and understanding while we have been working to restore normal service for you and your customers over the last few weeks. This has been an exceptionally challenging period for Openreach, and one that has tested our resourcing plans and engineering skills. It is important that we use the experience to develop further our processes for similar scenarios in the future. We would therefore welcome any feedback you may have; in particular your views on the handling of any specific emergency/priority or welfare cases and the quality of communication you received from us over this period. We are also keen to learn about any specific actions you undertook and how we might be able to do more to support these in the future.

Please email any feedback you have to customer-feedback@openreach.co.ukor pass it to your Customer Business Manager directly.

For further information please contact your Openreach Customer Business Management representative.

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