BT Openreach engineering work delayed by recent heavy snowfall

Bt Openreach has published the following declaration on their website regarding the recent heavy snowfall and the effects it has had on their engineering works:

″This MBORC declaration, due to aspects of recent severe weather, is issued as a special alert to all Communications Providers.

Following heavy snow fall Openreach is now declaring a matter beyond our reasonable control (MBORC) / force majeure event in some areas.The declaration is effective from 09:00 am on Monday 2nd February 2009. It applies to all provision and repair activities caused by the severe weather conditions in the specified areas.

The recent heavy snowfall has impacted Openreach in two main ways. Firstly, the reduced mobility of our engineering workforce and, secondly, the reduced numbers of Openreach people able to get to our control centres. This resulted in a number of missed jobs and appointments where, whilst every effort was made to contact those end users, this was not always successful.
We have increased our engineering resource capability for the rest of this week, especially in those areas worst affected, and put our control centre contingency plans into operation. The impact on service, on a regional basis, is as follows and is based upon the current seven day weather forecast.

· Scotland - impact seen in East of Scotland. We are working normally and full recovery is expected by 9th February 2009.
· Northern England - impact seen in the Pennines, Tees Valley, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Full recovery is expected by 9th February 2009.
· Midlands & Wales - impact seen in East & Central Midlands. Full recovery is expected by 9th February 2009.
· London Home Counties - impact seen in London and the Thames Valley areas. Full recovery is expected by 10th February 2009. We have declared MBORC in the following areas: Basingstoke, City, Docklands, Guildford, Heathrow, Southbank, Wembley, Westend and Westminster.
· South West - impact seen in Solent. Full recovery is expected by 10th February 2009.
· South East - impact seen in Sussex, Kent North and South London. Full recovery is expected by 10th February 2009. We have declared MBORC in the following areas: Chelmsford, Crayford, Croydon, Edmonton, Esher, Greenwich, Lea Valley, Richmond, Romford, St Albans and Watford.

We will review this situation on a day-by-day basis and will lift the MBORC in each area as soon as service returns to normal. In addition, we continue to watch the weather and its impact and will advise should we need to declare MBORC in any other areas, or if our recovery times are extended as a result.”