Co‐operation between Electricity and Gas Boards
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1959.tb01533.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1959 |
| Date | 01 June 1959 |
QUARTERLY
NOTES
Co-operation between Electricity and Gas Boards
N
March
1958
the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister
of
I
Power appointed a Departmental Committee with the following terms of
reference
:
“To consider ways in which, by co-operation between the Area and
Scottish Electricity and Gas Boards in the performance of their respective
statutory functions, the administration of the services of a like kind
provided to the public by the two industries might be improved
;
and to
make recommendations.”
The Chairman was Sir Cecil Weir, the industrialist, and there were eight other
members.
The Committee’s report
(Co-operation between Electricity and Gas Boards.
Cmnd.
695,
H.M.S.O.,
pp.
40,
2s.)
was presented
to
Parliament in March
1959
and deals mainly with meter reading and billing, showrooms and service
centres, advertising, and digging up streets. The first
of
these subjects is of
the greatest interest and importance.
The Committee considered two arguments in favour of joint meter reading
:
the likelihood
of
increased convenience for the consumer and of greater
efficiency for the industries.
It
rejected both arguments.
It
found that the
suggestion was exaggerated that the visits
of
two meter readers four times a
year caused a major inconvenience to householders
;
particularly as it learnt
that in some cases arrangements exist whereby Boards are prepared to
estimate the consumption of credit-worthy consumers two or even three times
a year with a half- or once-yearly balancing reading. Many reasons combined
to lead to the rejection of the second argument
:
the difficulty and added
cost of collecting the meter cards daily from both electricity and gas offices,
interleaving them in
“
walk order
”
and then reversing the process at the
end of the day
;
the existence
of
a high proportion of slot meters and the
different procedures and rates
of
pay of collectors and meter readers
;
the
poor results of pilot schemes of joint reading introduced during the war
during a time of severe labour shortage at the Government’s request
;
the
differing boundaries
of
the Electricity and Gas Boards
;
and the results
of
an
investigation into the problem carried out
in
1954 by Urwick, Orr and
Partners Ltd.
The report contains some interesting information about meter reading.
At the end of
1957
there were nearly
13
million gas consumers and over
16 million electricity consumers. Only about one-fifth of domestic consumers
of electricity had slot or prepayment meters whereas about two-thirds of
domestic gas consumers had them. The average time spent
on
reading meters
in
four towns studied by Urwick, Orr and Partners Ltd. varied quite widely.
For electricity
it
ranged from three to eight minutes and for gas from
3.7
to
5.8
minutes. The emptying
of
slot meters, of course, took longer the range
179
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METER
READING
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