ELECTRICITY LACKING
Stn,—Theri is very little available information on the absence of electricity in rural areas. Col. Waley Cohen mentions, page 403, The Spectator, October 29th, " a reluctant Electricity Commission." There is, nothing in their form for technical and financial statistics (El. C. 25) that can show where authorised suppliers have failed to provide service. Thanks are due to The Spectator and to Col. Waley Cohen for bringing this subject before the public. With limited paper, statistics cannot be printed. He states the " birth of a rural electric-supply dates from 1927." That was the year that Overhead Lines Association started. I have looked through the printed lists and found twenty-eight supplies (list enclosed) dating from x891 to 1926 which include supplies to 203 farms. I do not think all were connected at the start, but they are evidence of rural supplies from one to thirty-six years before Col. Waley Cohen's rural supply in 1927.
Our Prime Minister said at Caxton Hall, March 26th, 1942, " We must make sure that our fellow-countrymen and our Allies have the best service from us that we can give." Seventy-four per cent. of the 367 local authority suppliers and forty-five per cent. of the 259 authorised companies have given in Garcke's Manual of Electrical Undertakings the numbers of premises in respective areas. An urgent request to the Ministry of Fuel and Power should be made for complete information so that all can see where monopoly rights should be withdrawn, because of failure to provide service.
Twenty-one authorised suppliers give no service to seventy to eighty-nine per cent. of the premises in their scheduled areas ; sixty-six such give no service to fifty to sixty-nine per cent. of premises ; 126 more give no service to thirty to forty-nine per cent. of premises ; 113 more give no service to ten to twenty-nine per cent. of premises.
The Electric Lighting Act 1882, Section 6 (f) includes " the revocation of Order or Special Act where the undertakers have . practically failed to carry the powers granted to them into effect." Without an Act on the Statute Book imposing upon an individual 'the obligation to see Section 6 (I) enforced, no " reluctant Electricity Commis- sioner" will remember that 6 (f) exists.—Yours faithfully,
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