Draughty homes blamed for high energy bills Executives told MPs on the Commons energy committee that the vast majority of customers who lost power were swiftly reconnected. They said their ability to restore power was hampered by the severity, duration and widespread impact of the weather, which meant companies could not lend staff to one another. Tim Yeo, the committee's chairman, accused the power companies of complacency. "There is no sense of urgency in what you said about any plans to step up your capacity to respond to severe weather, even though we now have quite clear warnings that extreme events are likely to take place more frequently in future," he said. Basil Scarsella, the chief executive of UK Power Networks, which had hundreds of thousands of customers disconnected in the South East, said the response "took so long because the damage was right across the network" and strong winds had lasted longer than expected. Mr Scarsella said the company was looking at employing more staff. Mark Mathieson, the managing director of networks for SSE, said his company's response was "very good." He said the "unique" issues would have arisen even had it not been Christmas week, because "the whole of the UK was being battered at the same time." Flooding had made the impact of the storms worse than usual, he added. Ian Lavery MP called the industry's minimum commitment of £27 compensation for a power cut of more than 48 hours an "absolute pittance." Several companies voluntarily increased their compensation for those cut off over Christmas. Ofgem, the regulator, has said the standard amounts of compensation will rise from 2015. Network bosses also rebuffed suggestions that it would be cost-effective to bury power cables underground to avoid them being brought down by trees. Steve Johnson, the chief executive of Electricity North West, said it was "10 times more expensive to put a cable underground" and the "cost of doing that across the UK would be tens of billions of pounds."