Hospitals would not initially be protected from electricity cuts in a ‘national power outage’, government admits

Hospitals and other “priority customers” would not be protected from power cuts in the first days of an unplanned “national power outage”, according to new information from a secret government report on the possible impact on disabled people.

The information – previously redacted by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) – is part of an internal “scoping paper”*, produced in July 2023, which examined the possible impact of such national power emergencies on disabled people who rely on medical equipment at home.

The new information still does not provide a full picture of how the government would protect this group, and it appears that they would be expected to have made their own plans for such an emergency.

DHSC only released the redacted information after being told to do so by the information commissioner, following a complaint by Disability News Service (DNS).

The commissioner concluded in a decision notice that the department’s arguments for preventing the release of the redacted information were outweighed by the public interest in disclosing it to DNS.

The new information released by DHSC suggests that, in a “reasonable worst-case scenario” and in the first 48 to 72 hours of a national power outage, “no sites would be protected from power outages”, including hospitals.

Only after an electricity supply emergency code (ESEC) was implemented, which could take three days, would “priority customers”, including “certain hospitals”, be protected from “rolling outages”, although there would still be “no domestic exceptions”.

The scoping paper also reveals how – as well as disabled people reliant on medical equipment being subject to these rolling power cuts, probably in three-hour blocks – the national power outage would have numerous “secondary impacts” on “vulnerable people”, including on water, food, communications, transport, fuel and healthcare settings.

It warns of “severe impacts to the majority of water and sewage treatment sites… and therefore regions served by the sites impacted will not have a guaranteed continuous clean water supply”, while local disruption to food supply could affect the public’s ability to “maintain adequate food supplies”.

The public would not be able to call the 999 emergency service from most landline phones, while mobiles could only be used to call 999 if they had been adequately charged.

The paper also warns of “the potential sudden need for emergency admissions to hospitals and the burden this would put on an already stretched service, both in terms of bed capacity, staffing and the knock-on effect to other services”.

It suggests there are between 70,000 and 250,000 people who depend on electricity supply for medical equipment at home, but these numbers appear to rely on power industry figures and are likely to be an under-estimate.

DHSC stressed this week that the redacted information was taken from “worst-case scenario planning assumptions” that were “not a forecast or prediction but a standard tool to support prudent resilience and contingency planning for a wide range of scenarios, even those unlikely to occur”.

It added: “The UK has a secure and diverse energy system which has demonstrated its reliability over the past two years by delivering gas and electricity supplies when needed amidst a period characterised by high energy prices.

“The outlook for the coming winter is positive.”

The scoping paper was drawn up to consider what advice was available for disabled people who rely on mains-powered medical devices at home and whether there was a need for DHSC to issue its own guidance.

But DHSC decided not to draw up any guidance and to leave it to individual disabled people and their “care teams” to draw up plans for “how they can prepare for and respond to loss of power to their home”.

Information previously released by DHSC and reported by DNS showed the paper suggesting that such disabled people should “take individual responsibility for their own preparedness”.

That conclusion was reached even though the document makes clear that some disabled people could be “at very high risk of catastrophic deterioration” if the power cut was unexpected or continued for longer than their equipment’s batteries lasted.

The paper also admitted that there were significant flaws with the system of local priority services registers (PSRs), which are supposed to ensure energy companies provide “enhanced support to their more vulnerable customers”.

Those who sign up can be warned in some circumstances when their power is about to be cut off and can be signposted to support, but they are not exempt from blackouts, and if they need a continuous supply of electricity for medical reasons they are told to “seek advice from their local health service provider”.

The DHSC paper also warned that there were “barriers” that prevented many of those eligible from signing up to a PSR, while there was “an issue” with knowing how many devices supporting those with “the more critical conditions” were being used in people’s homes.

The scoping paper also admitted that “in a national power outage scenario it would not be possible to notify PSR households pre-emptively” that they were about to lose electricity.

And it stated that in a “reasonable worst-case scenario” in at least some types of “national power outage”, services such as providing emergency power to those on the PSR who rely on “at home medical equipment” would “not be available due to the scale and complexity of the outage”.

The attempt to secure the missing information from the scoping paper was the latest effort by DNS over the last two years – in the face of resistance from the last Conservative government – to find out what plans ministers had put in place to protect people who rely on equipment such as ventilators, oxygen concentrators and dialysis machines in the event of a major blackout.

DHSC declined to say this week if it believed the risks facing disabled people who use medical equipment at home had changed since the scoping study was produced last year, or if the new government was comfortable with the concerns raised about the risks they would face in the first two to three days of a national power outage.

It also declined to say if the new government believed that preparations for this group of disabled people were now adequate, in the event of a national power emergency this winter.

But a DHSC spokesperson said in a statement: “The UK has a secure and diverse energy system, and we remain confident that the gas and electricity system operators have the tools they need to effectively balance supply and demand in a wide range of scenarios, as they have done in previous years.

“We prepare for a wide range of risks, even those unlikely to occur, as set out in the National Risk Register.

“We launched the Prepare campaign in May to help the public take simple and effective steps to be more prepared for risks, which includes information for what to do in a power cut and advice for users of medical devices.”

The Prepare website includes advice for disabled people and information on what to do in a power outage.

But the website includes no new information for disabled people who need to use medical equipment at home, relying instead on DHSC’s previous position that they should “make a plan” in advance with their “care provider, clinical care team and/or equipment supplier”.

*Rolling Power Outages: Medical Equipment and Vulnerable People

Picture: The Department of Health and Social Care’s Whitehall offices 

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