Surrey County Council's Transportation Select Committee has demanded that EDF Energy explains its performance failures after the company missed a scheduled meeting.

EDF and industry regulator Ofgem were asked to attend a meeting of the select committee to answer concerns about poor performance in fixing faults and providing power for lights. An Ofgem representative went to the meeting at County Hall but EDF failed to attend.

The county council's contact centre has seen a steady rise in the number of complaints about streetlights while EDF's performance has declined since it attended a meeting in April to answer the same concerns, it is now significantly below standards set by Ofgem.

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David Hodge, Chairman of the select committee, said: "Scrutiny is a vital function at the county council and our duty to Surrey's residents is to provide the best service possible and the best value for money. In this case, we also have a duty to improve safety for our residents.

"I am disappointed and frustrated on behalf of the residents of Surrey that EDF has not come to the meeting to discuss how it plans to deliver much-needed improvements for our residents.

"We wanted EDF to reassure us and our residents how it was going to reverse the decline in performance and we are determined this will happen, so we have rescheduled the meeting for 3 December and have also invited Ofgem to return.

"I call on EDF to take immediate action to improve its performance and to come to the next select committee meeting on 3 December, because frankly its performance is just not good enough."

(CD/JM)