Loss of gas - Chester

Good afternoon Chester.

Our team worked incredibly hard, yesterday, from early morning to late in the evening, to restore gas to the last remaining zones.

We now have only a small number of properties to restore gas to – the gas is there, it’s just that no-one has been home when we have made visits to turn it back on.

Please DO NOT try to turn your gas supply back on yourself. Our engineers need to complete some safety checks before they can turn your gas supply back on.

We will try several more times throughout today and tomorrow, to visit the properties where we have not been able to complete the safety checks. After a number of attempts, we will leave details on how to contact us to arrange for an engineer to visit.

What’s been incredible to witness throughout this last week is the response from the local community. Kind, courteous and understanding to the team – despite the challenging circumstances everyone found themselves in. We can’t thank everyone enough.

Important message on ‘if you smell gas’

With gas now fully back into the network, it’s important to stress that if you ever smell gas, call the gas emergency service on 0800 111 999. This is a 24/7, 365-day service.

*All calls are recorded and may be monitored.

Good evening

Well, what a week that’s been! We are delighted to confirm that our team has now restored supplies to every property that we have been able to gain access to.

The only properties off gas now are those where no-one was home when we called. We expect that number to fall significantly this evening, as people return home from work and we are able to catch you in.

If you are still off gas, ring our dedicated phone line 0808 178 8085 (until 8pm this evening, and then from 8am tomorrow) and we’ll dispatch an engineer to you.

Please rest assured that, even without a call, we will still continue to revisit these homes tonight and tomorrow.

You MUST let our engineers restore your supply – DO NOT attempt to do this yourself. They will carry out essential safety checks inside your home.

From now on, you will notice that our presence in the area will reduce – but we are not going away. We will keep engineers in the area to attend to the remaining (and reducing) number that need their gas switching back on, and we also know we have tidying up to do, given how we’ve had to dig in many places. Please rest assured that these jobs are all booked in and will be attended to as soon as possible.

We also remain your 24/7, 365-days-a-year gas emergency service – if you ever smell gas, day or night, act immediately and call 0800 111 999*. If the call handler confirms that an engineer is needed, they will dispatch one of our team.

So, almost exactly seven days since all this began, we begin to scale down this incident response. We just want to say again that you have been incredible throughout. Kind, courteous and understanding to our team, as we set about the difficult task of reintroducing gas to 18km of underground gas pipes.

We also want to say how grateful we are to St Luke’s Church and Chester Rugby Club, who have hosted our command and customer centres for this incident – thank you very much.

We are not expecting to post any further updates this weekend. One final ‘thank you’ then – and we hope you all have a more restful weekend that the last one!

Good morning,

In case you missed the news last night, we're delighted to confirm that the final three zones - Zones 9, 10, and 11 - have now all had gas restored to the network!

Work began in the late evening to visit as many homes as possible, but as these three zones represent an extremely large proportion of the total affected area - around 40 per cent - we weren't able to get to everyone before we turned in for the night.

However, today is a new day and the team are determined to put smiles on people's faces as we head out from 8am to carry out safety checks and get you back on gas.

Please stay in

We need you to be in when we visit so that we can access your home. If you need to go out, could you leave a key with a neighbour? Either way, we will revisit several times, so please don’t worry if we miss you on the first attempt.

Important: please DO NOT attempt to restore your own supply. Our engineers must do this. They will also check your boiler and any gas appliances, to make sure everything is safe.

For your own peace of mind, please do also check to see the ID of our engineers when they call. They won’t be offended, and completely understand why you will want to check.

Contacting us about this incident

Our customer team will be available again at St Luke’s Church today and you can also contact us on 0808 178 8085 (this is a phone line dedicated to this incident).

Hot lunchtime and evening meals will once again be available at St Luke’s Church, with last orders being taken at around 7pm. Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

If you smell gas

Now that we have gas fully back into the network, we want to stress that if you smell gas, act immediately. Call the gas emergency service on 0800 111 999. This number operates 24/7, 365 days a year. All calls are recorded and may be monitored.

Some great news to bring you this evening. Our team are now starting to restore gas supplies at properties in Zones 9, 10 and 11, the final three zones.

Given the number of properties involved (it’s 40 per cent of the overall total), and given the time of day, we are unlikely to reach everybody this evening.

We will try to get to as many of you as we can. We will knock on doors until around 11pm, and then call it a day, so as not to disturb or worry you.

We will then resume our house visits from early tomorrow morning.

Please stay in

Please stay in, as we do need to access your home. If you need to go out, perhaps leave a key with a neighbour? Either way, we will revisit several times, so please don’t worry.

Important: please DO NOT attempt to restore your own supply. Our engineers must do this. They will also check your boiler and any gas appliances, to make sure everything is safe.

For your own peace of mind, please do also check to see the ID of our engineers when they call. They won’t be offended, and completely understand why you will want to check.

There was some incredible engineering today, to enable us to reach this point. With safety of our engineers and motorists in mind, we had to introduce some temporary traffic lights. We know this caused extra congestion at times. We hope you understand.

To recap then, this means we now have gas back into all zones (1 to 11).

During this incident, we’ve had to reintroduce gas, carefully and with safety our top priority, to around 18km of gas pipes. So, it has been a huge undertaking! We’ve been humbled by your patience and the genuine kindness shown to the team. From every one of us, to every one of you – thank you.

Contacting us about this incident

Our customer team will be available again at St Luke’s Church tomorrow, and you can also contact us on 0808 178 8085 (this is a phone line dedicated to this incident).

If you smell gas

Now that we have gas fully back into the network, we want to stress that if you smell gas, act immediately. Call the gas emergency service on 0800 111 999. This number operates 24/7, 365 days a year. All calls are recorded and may be monitored.

Good morning,

Following a rather hot week, it looks like temperatures will drop a little bit today, but that won’t stop us as we continue our work to get you back on gas.

By the end of yesterday, we had successfully reintroduced gas back into the network in zones 1-8 and are visiting each home to carry out our safety checks.

Again, when our engineers arrive to reconnect the supply, they will always have identification which they should display when talking to you.

However, If you want to check that this is not a bogus caller, please feel free to give us a call on: 0800 389 8000 - Option 2 and we can confirm they work for us.

As part of the restoration safety checks, our engineers will check everything gas-related inside the property (e.g. your boiler).

DO NOT attempt to restore your own supply. Our engineers must do this.

Today, our engineers will move into the remaining zones – 9, 10 and 11 to get gas back to your property. These zones include many properties, but we will be working hard to restore your supply as quickly as we can.

Contacting us and food vans  

We’ll keep you posted throughout the day on how things are progressing, but if you wish to speak to us, our customer team will once again be based at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road. You can also ring 0808 178 8085, which is a line dedicated just for this incident.

We will continue to keep in regular contact with customers on the Priority Services Register (PSR) and we are grateful to have representatives from The British Red Cross with us once again today, who are making house visits.

Hot lunchtime and evening meals will once again be available at St Luke’s Church, with last orders being taken at around 7pm. Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

Supporting you

Once again, the whole team would like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as we continue our work to reconnect everyone to the gas network. We have reconnected half of the properties affected, but we’d like to remind residents that they must be in when we call round. If you can’t be in, is there a neighbour that you could leave a key with so we can complete the safety checks?

An early evening update from the team dealing with the loss of gas incident in Chester:

We now have gas into parts of Zone 5, so have recently added this to the zones where we are restoring gas supplies in properties.

By the end of today, we hope to have gas flowing in all pipes within that zone (Zone 5).

That will mean we have gas back into Zones 1 to 8 by the end of today.

Please DO NOT attempt to restore your own gas supply. Our engineers must do this. As well as restoring your supply, they will check everything is working safely (eg. your boiler). Stay in please, if you can, and our engineers will get to you soon. If you need to go out, perhaps leave a key with a neighbour? Either way, we will continue to make return visits until we catch you in.

Zones 9 to 11

We are doing preparatory works this evening as we get closer to the reintroduction of gas to these zones.

We will share an update as soon as we know more (this will most likely be tomorrow now).

Thank you for continuing to show extraordinary patience. We really appreciate it.

Contacting us and food vans

Our customer team remains at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road, if you wish to speak to us. You can also ring 0808 178 8085, which is a line dedicated just to this incident (available until 8pm). We are keeping in regular contact with customers on the priority services register (PSR). Food vans are available at St Luke’s Church for a hot evening meal (final orders will be taken at 7pm this evening). Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

Food allergies

If you have any food allergies that our vans cannot cater for, please do let us know. We will of course make alternative arrangements for you to get a hot meal (on us).

An early afternoon update from the team dealing with the loss of gas incident in Chester:

We are starting to restore gas supplies in Zones 6, 7 and 8. Our engineers are out now knocking door-to-door. Work is taking place right now that we hope will mean we can share good news to Zone 5 later today. Thank you for bearing with us.

Important: DO NOT try to restore your own supply. Our engineers must do this, as they will safety-check everything. Please stay in, if you can. If you are unable to stay in (we appreciate it’s a big ask), perhaps leave a key with a neighbour? Either way, we will continue to make return visits to any property we can’t access.

Zones 1 to 4

We have visited every property impacted by this incident and restored supply where we have been able to get access. We continue to revisit these ‘no access’ properties.

Zones 9 to 11

Work is ongoing through today to create the conditions we need to safely reintroduce gas to the distribution pipes here. We are determined not to make promises we can’t keep, but the plan still remains for us to have gas available here by the weekend.

Contacting us and food vans

Our customer team remains at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road, if you wish to speak to us. You can also ring 0808 178 8085, which is a line dedicated just to this incident (available until 8pm). We are keeping in regular contact with customers on the priority services register (PSR). Food vans are available at St Luke’s Church for a hot evening meal (final orders will be taken at 7pm this evening). Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

Food allergies

If you have any food allergies that our vans cannot cater for, please do let us know. We will of course make alternative arrangements for you to get a hot meal (on us).

Thank you

By the end of today, we should have gas available to around half of the properties impacted by this incident. We know that means more than half of you are eagerly waiting for news on your Zones. We can’t thank you enough for being so patient and understanding. We will continue to update this page as we can confirm more.

Good morning,

Here is a quick update from the team dealing with the loss of gas incident in Chester.

Yesterday afternoon and evening, we carried out further preparation work so that we are in a great position to start reintroducing gas to more zones in the affected area.

We have around 100 colleagues working in the area and plan to reintroduce gas into Zones 5, 6, 7, and 8 (though the order will be 6, 7, 8, and 5).

It is important that you are in, as we will need to access your home. If you need to go out, perhaps you could leave a key with a neighbour.

When our engineers arrive to reconnect the supply, they will always have identification which they should display when talking to you. However, If you want to check that this is not a bogus caller, please feel free to give us a call on: 0800 389 8000 - Option 2 and we can confirm they work for us.

As part of the restoration safety checks, our engineers will check everything gas-related inside the property (e.g. your boiler).

DO NOT attempt to restore your own supply. Our engineers must do this.

Contacting us and food vans

Our customer team will be based at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road, once again if you wish to speak to us. You can also ring 0808 178 8085, which is a line dedicated just for this incident.

There will once again be food provision at St Luke’s Church, for lunchtime and teatime hot meals (last orders to be taken around 7pm). Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

Supporting you

Thank you so much for bearing with us. Your support for our teams is remarkable and is very much appreciated. We know we have a quarter of the total impacted properties back on gas already, and that number should rise today.

As we come to the end of another busy day, Cadent incident commander Nick Jerman has a message for residents affected by the loss of gas.

An afternoon update from the team dealing with the loss of gas incident in Chester:

Zones 1 to 4

Our engineers have just moved into Zone 4, to restore supplies. This is in addition to Zones 1, 2 and 3. We will need access to your property to restore supply and carry out essential safety checks (for example, making sure your boiler is working safely). If you are in Zones 1, 2 or 3, we have knocked at least once at your address. We will make further visits through today and beyond, to try to catch you in. But if you do get home, do feel free to ring us on 0808 178 8085 and we will arrange for an engineer to visit you.

Please stay in, if you can. If you need to go out, perhaps leave a key with a neighbour? Either way, we will make return visits, late into the evening, so don’t worry. It is important that you DO NOT try to restore you own gas supply.

Zones 5 to 11

Thank you for bearing with us. We are making progress and promise to keep you updated as we are ready to begin restoring gas supply to your area. We expect Zone 5 to be available for gas restoration next. Other zones are likely to be off gas again overnight. We are sorry. We will provide another update later today.

Contacting us and food vans

Our customer team remains at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road, if you wish to speak to us. You can also ring 0808 178 8085, which is a line dedicated just to this incident. We are keeping in regular contact with customers on the priority services register (PSR). Food vans are available this evening at St Luke’s Church, for a hot meal. Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

A morning update from the team dealing with the loss of gas incident in Chester:

Zones 1 and 3 

With gas back into Zones 1 and 3 last night, we were able to restore supply to every property we were able to get access to. Our team is back out in force this morning to make revisits, to those where we didn’t get an answer when we knocked yesterday.

Zone 2 

We have started to restore supplies in Zone 2 from this morning.

See the Affected Areas tab of this page for details of which streets are in which zones.

Please stay in, as we will need to access your home – or, if you need to go out, perhaps leave a key with a neighbour? As part of the restoration safety checks, our engineers will check everything gas-related inside the property (e.g. your boiler).

DO NOT attempt to restore your own supply. Our engineers must do this.

Other Zones

Thank you for being so patient and considerate. We know you want to know when your gas will be back on. We are gradually reintroducing gas to several kilometres of underground pipes. It is a major operation, with safety our top priority. This does take time and we promise to keep you updated as soon as we know more.

Contacting us and food vans

Our customer team remains at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road, if you wish to speak to us. You can also ring 0808 178 8085, which is a line dedicated just to this incident.

We are keeping in regular contact with customers on the priority services register (PSR) and we are grateful to have representatives from The British Red Cross with us today, who are making house visits to PSR customers.

The food vans are also going to be available again at St Luke’s Church, for lunchtime and teatime hot meals (last orders to be taken around 7.30pm). Please understand that this is only for people who continue to have no gas.

Our engineers are making good progress in restoring gas supplies in Zones 1 and 3 (see the previous updates we posted this evening). While we will work late into the evening, we will call it a day around 11pm, so as not to worry or wake anyone.

We will be back early tomorrow, to resume restoring supplies in these two zones.

We will also continue with our phased reintroduction of gas into the network.

We must do this carefully and in phases (zones), to make sure everything is working safely. We hope you understand that safety is always our priority, but we hope you know too, that we are working relentlessly to resolve this as quickly as we possibly can.

As soon as we have updates tomorrow, we will post them here.

We will need access to your property to restore your gas supply. Our engineers will also check your boiler and any gas appliances, to make sure everything is okay. Please DO NOT attempt to restore your own gas supply.

Our customer team will be at St Luke’s Church again tomorrow, as will the hot food vans. If you can’t make it to the centre, but have a question for us – call 0808 178 8085 (line reopen at 8am).

Thank you again for bearing with us. It is very much appreciated.

Zone 3

A quick update to say that we are now actively restoring gas supplies in Zone 3, in addition to continuing to restore supplies in Zone 1. Please read our previous update at 17.45 for guidance on what this means for you. If your street is in Zones 1 or 3, please stay in if you can, so that we can restore your supply, as well as carry out necessary safety checks. DO NOT attempt to restore your own gas supply. We are making good progress and thanks again for your patience.

Zone 1

We are now actively restoring gas supplies in Zone 1 (street names are listed in the Affected Areas tab on this incident page). Our army of engineers is out in force, knocking on doors. You don’t need to do anything – we will come to you.

Important: DO NOT attempt to restore you own gas supply. Our engineers MUST do this, to ensure everything is safe. As well as restoring your supply, they will check your boiler and any gas appliances.

We hope (and ask) that you can stay in to wait for our engineers to knock, but we understand that you may have commitments. If you need to go out, perhaps leave a key with a neighbour? We need access to your property; we don’t need to see you!

We will be making house visits into the evening but will stop when it’s getting too late and you would rather not be disturbed (probably around 11pm). If you are not in when we call, we will revisit several times, so please do not worry about that.

All other Zones

Around one-sixth of the impacted properties are in Zone 1. We hope to move into more Zones tomorrow. This means that many of you will be off gas again overnight and we are sorry about that. We are working as fast as we can, but must always put safety first. We will only restore your supply when we know it is safe to do so.

About the Zones: we may not move in numerical order – as the restoration process may not allow us to do that. We will keep this page updated as we know more.

Showers, food and how to contact us

Hot showers can be taken at Chester Rugby Club (and thank you to the club for that) and hot meals are being served until around 7:30pm tonight at the food vans at St Luke’s Church in Chester Road (thank you to St Luke’s for hosting us).

Our customer team is at St Luke’s Church too – so call in if you need an electric hot plate (for cooking) or have any questions for us. We also have a dedicated phone line for this incident, which is 0808 178 8085 (this is open until 8pm).

Thank you

Finally, another huge thank you. The kindness you’ve shown to the team since we arrived has been incredible. It is genuinely appreciated by everyone.

Work has continued through this morning in preparation for us beginning to restore gas into our pipes and then into your properties. We are hopeful we can begin to restore gas to some properties later today. However, for many of you, you will again be without gas overnight.

We are sorry about that. Our engineers are working as quickly as they safely can to restore your gas supply. This is meticulous work, and safety must remain our priority. We know it is not nice to be without gas and our team is incredibly grateful for the patience and understanding you have shown so far. A big thank you to everyone.

Please DO NOT attempt to restore you own supply – our engineers must do this. They will check everything is working properly, including your boiler and any gas appliances.

We have an army of engineers working in the Dee Banks / Great Boughton area of Chester, and we will knock on your door when we are ready to restore supply. What if you are not in? We will come back several times until we get an answer, and well into the evening, so please don’t worry about missing us (if you’re at work, for example).

You will see from the ‘affected areas’ tab of this page that we have divided the impacted area into zones. We will gradually restore gas to the network zone by zone. Please do not assume this will happen in number order, and we may move streets between zones over time. We will aim to keep this page updated with the latest info as we have it.

Our customer team is back at St Luke’s Church, in Chester Road, so if you have any questions, please come along to ask. We also have a dedicated phone number that customers can ring relating to this incident – 0808 178 8085 (available 9am to 8pm). We have a list of customers who are on the priority services register (PSR) and we are visiting each of these. There is hot food provision at St Luke’s too, with priority given to those on the PSR. The vans will serve food from 12 noon until (last orders at) 6pm.

Good Morning,

We’ve had a very busy weekend, and today we have engineers and support staff from far and wide to help get your gas back on as safely and quickly as possible. We ask that you bear with us a little longer. There is a lot of preparation work to be completed. Once we have the gas back into our network, we will be working zone by zone, street by street to carry out safety checks and then turn your gas supply back on safely.

We will let you know when we are starting to turn gas supplies back on in your zone and street. We hope that will be later today. Please DO NOT try to turn your gas supply back on yourself.

We know the restoration of the gas to each and every property, will take time and it will take a few days or so to complete. We ask for your continued patience and understanding.

If you need to call us, our dedicated phoneline 0808 178 8085 will be open from 9am – 8pm each day.

Our Customer Centre at St Luke’s Church , Chester Road will be open from 10am – 6pm

Once again, we will have food trucks available for the customers on the PSR register, at St Luke’s Church. Food will be available from 12noon to 6pm.

N.B. If you are not on the PSR register but are affected by this incident; and you would like to have some food from the trucks, you will need to show a utility bill or some form of ID to prove you live in the area impacted by this incident.

We will be starting to restore gas in Zone 1 first. We’ll update you on when we start this work and if possible, which streets we will start.

We do need people to be in. We appreciate this is not always possible, but if you could leave a key to a neighbour. Don’t worry we will keep returning to each property until we are able to safely turn the gas back on.

Please keep an eye on our website updates and your local social media pages.

It’s been another busy, but extremely productive day as we continue our work to reinstate the gas supply to affected areas of East Chester.

As previously stated, we do need to visit each property so that the gas supply can be safely turned off, and I’m pleased to say that an attempt has been made at every property.

Where residents had not been in when we called, we have noted the address and will return to try again. Please DO NOT attempt to turn off your gas supply yourself, one of our engineers needs to ensure that it is done properly. The only exception to this, is if you have been asked to turn off your gas supply by a call handler from the gas emergency line. They will walk you through the process and tell you exactly what you should do.

Under the ‘Affected Areas’ tab, you will have seen a long list of roads that we have visited. These roads are now being grouped into zones and we will be working zone-by-zone to restore the gas supply (once all properties have been successfully visited). We will be updating the Affected Areas tab soon so you can see which zone you are in.

Our teams have been carrying out repair work throughout the day and it is looking very likely that we will be able to restore gas to some properties tomorrow.

Once this is done, we must revisit all the affected properties to carry out our safety checks, before the gas supplies to homes and businesses can be turned back on. Again, please DO NOT try to do this yourself.

While this is good news, we are at the start of the process which will take some time to complete. Please bear with us, we will get you back on gas as soon as we can.

As we look ahead, our Customer Team will once again be based at St Luke’s Church in Chester Road, Huntington, tomorrow. There will also be a continuation of the provision of food.

If you have any questions relating to the ongoing loss of gas incident, please pop by and we’ll be able to answer them and help as best we can. If you are unable to make it to St Luke’s Church, you can call us on 0808 178 8085.

Food provision:

Good afternoon,

This is just a quick update to let you know that we have secured several food vehicles to supply a meal to those affected by the loss of gas incident.

These meals are being offered firstly to Priority Service Register (PSR) customers who are in a more vulnerable situation than others.

However, we do have plenty of food available, so please do feel free to come along to St Luke’s Church, Chester Rd, Huntington, Chester CH3 6BT, to collect a meal.

Members of Cadent’s Customer Team are at the church, so if you have any questions or concerns, please do speak with them.

For more information about the PSR register, please visit https://cadentgas.com/help-and-advice/priority-services-register

Good afternoon, residents of East Chester affected by the loss of gas supply.

Our Customer Team will be available today at St Luke’s Church, Chester Rd, Huntington, Chester CH3 6BT, until 4pm.

If you have any questions relating to the ongoing loss of gas incident, please pop by and we’ll be able to answer them and help as best we can. If you are unable to make it to St Luke’s Church, you can call us on 0808 178 8085.

Engineers will be out and about throughout the day to visit as many homes in the area as possible, to ensure the gas supply is safely turned off. Please DO NOT try to do this yourself. This will take some time, so please bear with us.

Good afternoon residents of East Chester affected by the loss of gas supply today.

Last night we worked with the emergency services and Scottish Power to put out the fire on the gas main in the Dees Bank area.  As a result of the damage to our gas pipe we had to cut of the gas supply to a number of properties in the area.  This decision was not taken lightly and we understand the consequences of this decision and the impact on residents and businesses in the area.

This morning we have been organising resources and gaining extra help from around the NW and beyond. 

We must visit all the homes in the area first, to ensure the gas supply to each home is safely turned off.  Please DO NOT try to do this yourself.  This will take some time, so please bear with us.

In parallel to this work we are working on repairing the damaged gas pipe. At this stage we do not know how long this will take.

Once every property has been turned off safely and we can get gas back into the network, we must revisit all of the affected properties to carry out our safety checks, before the gas supplies to homes and businesses can be turned back on. Again, please DO NOT try to do this yourself.

We are in the process of organising a dedicated phone line for this incident and a Customer Centre based at Huntington Village Hall, Butterbache Road, Huntington, Chester CH3 6DB that will be open from 15:30 Saturday 22^nd of June 2024. Please bear with us, we will continue to keep you updated through this webpage and social media too.

We do expect this incident to carry on into early next week. We are doing everything we can to bring extra resources to site, work with the local authority and others, to bring this incident to a close as safely and quickly as possible.