Page 22
The National
Grid boss
paid £497k
... to move
just 96 miles
By James TozerTHE boss of the electricity
network was given almost
£500,000 to relocate just 96
miles to live in London.
National Grid chief John Petti-
grew, who was earning £4.6 mil-
lion at the time, received the
deal when he took over in 2016.
The 50-year-old lived with his wife
Lesley and their two children in a
£1.5 million Victorian villa in Leam-
ington Spa, close to the firm’s War-
wick headquarters.
But after being made chief execu-
tive based at its central London
offices – just an hour and 20 minutes
away by train – the firm paid
£497,000 to cover travel expenses, a
short-term let and stamp duty on a
property he bought in the capital.
Mr Pettigrew faced accusations of
‘rewards for failure’ after a power
cut on Friday affected almost a mil-
lion people and brought chaos to
the transport network.
Yesterday Labour MP Chris Evans
branded the relocation payout ‘a
national disgrace’. ‘There shouldn’tday insiders stressed that Mr Petti-
grew was just one of its senior lead-
ership team working on responding
to the power cut and that as group
chief executive he spent around half
his time in the US handling its oper-
ations there.
On Friday afternoon power had to
be restored to more than 900,000
customers after the almost simulta-
neous loss of two large generators.
The first to disconnect was a gas-
fired plant at Little Barford in Bed-
fordshire at 4.58pm followed two
minutes later by the Hornsea off-
shore wind farm.
Energy Secretary Andrea Lead-
som demanded that National Grid
‘urgently review and report to
Ofgem’.
National Grid’s operations direc-
tor Duncan Burt told the BBC the
power cut was an ‘incredibly rare
event’ and claimed back-up systems
had ‘worked well’.
However, the knock-on effects
continued to hit the railways over-
night into Saturday, with commut-
ers stranded for hours, while the
power supply to Ipswich Hospital
also cut.
Commenting at the time on Mr
Pettigrew’s relocation package,
National Grid said: ‘In keeping with
our relocation policy which is
applicable to all employees whose
jobs move location, the company
reimbursed him for expenses related
to the relocation.’CHAOS caused by Friday’s blackout
has raised the question of why
more energy is not stored.
Experts claim that had there
been ‘more battery storage’ in
the electricity grid, it could have
‘reacted instantly to the frequency
dropping’ – saving almost a million
people from being affected.
‘But that means more money
being spent – and customers’ prices
increasing,’ Phil Hewitt of EnApp-
Sys, which provides energy systemsto power providers, told The Sun
on Sunday. Energy storage is likely
to prove increasingly important
with our growing dependence on
less predictable sources of power,
such as wind and solar energy.
But while domestic batteries the
size of gas boilers are available for
homes fitted with solar panels,
analysts say it is likely to be many
years before the technology will
be capable of storing sufficient
energy to cover large blackouts.‘Rewards for
failure’
(^) Daily Mail, Monday, August 12, 2019
ANDREW PIERCE IS AWAY
High earner: John Pettigrew
How to stop blackouts
be rewards for failure,’ he told The
Sun on Sunday. ‘Questions need to
be raised over the chief executive’s
pay and bonuses for next year.’
National Grid, which owns and
operates the electricity transmis-
sion network in England and Wales,
said reimbursement for relocation
costs was ‘applicable to all employ-
ees whose jobs move location’.
Mr Pettigrew has been with
National Grid since joining as a
graduate trainee in 1991, a year after
the firm was privatised.
He has spoken out to oppose
Labour’s proposals to renationalise
the energy industry, saying he was
not convinced the cost would be in
the interests of taxpayers.
Last year his salary rose to £887,000
but long-term performance awards
fell to £1.9 million, part of a total
package worth £3.5 million. Yester-