Palliative Care: Power Failures

(asked on 8th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will take steps to ensure that children’s hospice and palliative services, including those provided by the voluntary sector, are on the Protected Sites List as part of the Electricity Emergency Supply Code.


Answered by
Graham Stuart Portrait
Graham Stuart
Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This question was answered on 22nd December 2022

Children’s hospice and palliative services are not listed as ‘Approved Designated Services’ as set out in section 5.2 of the Electricity Supply Emergency Code, and therefore do not qualify for Protected Site status unless they are located within a hospital.

The restrictive Protected Site criteria is essential as there are technical requirements under the Electricity Supply Emergency Code that limit the Protected Sites List to 10% of total demand. To keep many children’s hospice and palliative services connected would involve keeping all other properties in the area also connected and therefore the majority do not meet the criteria.

Sites are ultimately responsible for their own business continuity and should not rely on being on the Protected Sites List as their power resilience. The Electricity Supply Emergency Code only applies to certain scenarios and does not give sites complete coverage for all possible power disruption events.

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