Why do DNOs have such different policies?

[Gavin John Hyde]

Have a job to price up today in Corsham, comes under SSE, they are happy to let you get on and pull the fuse if it is domestic and single phase. if you dont have any seals for when done they will happily provide you with some from the local depot.
Western Power on the other hand who are the DNO for a job i did on a farm literally a mile down the road, say you can not pull the fuse... In this case I wouldn't have pulled it anyway the thing was cracked and looked pretty stuck. But the principle is the same.
All that separates these two locations is a few fields. One side of fields you can pull them, other side have to pay close to a hundred quid and wait ages. If its new and looks in good nick then the seal fairy attends.
Anybody know why some DNO's allow them to be pulled and others don't? from the info on the SSE website they say they had approaches from the schemes to facilitate this. seems western power did not see a benefit to this process.
Thats my rant over.

 

[Octopus]

In the ideal world they would all be like SSE....
.
Here's hoping

 

[Deleted member 26818]

We used to have the same with street lighting.
LEB one side of a road needed an earth electrode with a resistance of 10 ohms or less to allow connection to their PME.
Eastern only required an electrode.

 

[Midwest]

I seem to recall the DNO's in the guise of the energy network association (think), were having a pow-wow on this very subject. They probably run out of coffee & biscuits.

 

[Nigel]

Corsham is my neck of the woods.

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

Corsham is my neck of the woods.

Ah.. Rare I go out that far from Bath to be fair, although I do like the drive out through Box as the scenery is good! but its a CU change, some remedial work then install some new lights. so a couple days work makes it worthwhile.

 

[Gavin John Hyde]

I seem to recall the DNO's in the guise of the energy network association (think), were having a pow-wow on this very subject. They probably run out of coffee & biscuits.

I think it is too optimistic to hope they have a national policy on it, even if they ran a one day safety awareness course before letting you pull the fuses without praying to the seal fairy it wouldn't be too bad.

 

[MJPD29]

Because none of them really know what they are talking about

 

[freddo]

Because none of them really know what they are talking about

That's the problem when office staff with no practical experience make the rules.

 

[SparkyChick]

It's a nice little earner for Western Power. £200 or there about's to fit an isolator. £75 per visit for pulling the fuse and putting it back in. I normally have an isolator lined up and get the guy to sit in the van for 10 minutes.

Had an engineer out on Tuesday and he was quite open about it, he believes most sparks don't bother getting them out and just cut the seals.

I know NAPIT were working on trying to get WPD to change their stance on it, bloody wish they would.