Entitlements

Power cut compensation: what your network operator owes you

By Alan Redbourn. Published 5 September 2026. Sources checked between 29 August 2026 and 2 September 2026.

Your network operator owes you £95 if an unplanned power cut in normal weather lasts more than 12 hours where fewer than 5,000 premises are affected, or more than 24 hours where 5,000 or more are affected. Then £45 for every further 12 hours, up to £390.¹

That is the normal weather regime. Severe weather is a different set of numbers on a different clock, and mixing the two up is where the confusion on this subject comes from.

Normal weather

The threshold turns on how many premises the fault hit, not on how bad it felt in your kitchen. Fewer than 5,000 premises affected, and the clock is 12 hours. 5,000 or more, and it is 24 hours. Either way the first payment is £95 for a household. A non-domestic premises is owed £190 to start with. After that, £45 for each further 12 hours, and the whole thing stops at £390.¹

Severe weather

Here is the part that catches people out. In severe weather the first payment is smaller and you wait longer for it. £85, at 24 hours for a category 1 storm and 48 hours for a category 2 storm.¹

What changes in your favour is everything after that. The payment steps up by £45 every 6 hours rather than every 12, and the cap is £2,165 rather than £390.¹ So a short storm outage pays less than a short outage in still weather, and a long one pays a great deal more.

Both columns: Ofgem, Guaranteed Standards of Performance, checked 29 August 2026.¹¹

Storm Darragh, in the winter of 2024 to 2025, left over 2 million homes without power, with disruption lasting up to a week for hundreds of customers.² A week is 168 hours. On the severe weather scale that is a long way past the first £85.

Cut off over and over

Separate entitlement, separate money. A household cut off more than four times in a year, for at least 3 hours each time, is owed an extra £95. The year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so short outages in February and April fall in different years.¹

Gas

For an unplanned gas supply interruption, Ofgem states a household can claim £70 for every 24 hours the gas is off, and a business £120, with the amount increasing the longer the supply is off.¹

A planned interruption is a different payment, and a smaller one. If the network operator gives less than 7 days' notice that your gas will be turned off, a household can get £50 and a business £120.¹ Two entitlements, easy to confuse, and confusing them costs you £20.

The figures move every January

Guaranteed Standards payments are adjusted each year by the percentage change in the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs, published for the month of January.³ Every figure on this page was read off Ofgem's own page on 29 August 2026. If you are reading this after the next January, check the number before you quote it at anybody.

Report it first

Call 105 in England, Scotland and Wales. In Northern Ireland the number is 03457 643643.⁴ Reporting the cut is what puts a start time on it, and every figure above is a function of hours.

If the money does not arrive

Ofgem states the payment is usually automatic and that a household which has not received one can approach the operator directly.¹ Start there.

Beyond that, the escalation route in the published sources is about suppliers rather than network operators, so read it for what it is. The Energy Ombudsman states that a supplier has 8 weeks to resolve a dispute, and that a customer may register the dispute once 8 weeks have passed without resolution, or once the supplier issues a final decision or deadlock letter.⁵ It states its service is free and independent.⁵ Its possible outcomes include practical action such as crediting an account, an apology, a financial award, or a combination, and where the customer accepts the decision the supplier has to act on it.⁵ Where a supplier can do nothing further it may issue a deadlock letter, which tells the customer they can now contact the Ombudsman.⁵

Ask the Ombudsman whether it will take a network operator case before you build a plan around it. That is not sourced here, and a guess would be worse than the gap.

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