Northern Gas Networks (NGN) is pleased to confirm that essential engineering work to upgrade ageing metal gas mains on the Ripon Road in Harrogate is now complete.

The temporary traffic lights on the Ripon Road will be removed this weekend once reinstatement work has been completed.

Around 3,000 customers in the HG1, HG2, HG3 and HG4 areas of Harrogate lost their gas supply following a gas escape on the Ripon Road on Friday 15 October.  NGN’s immediate priority was to repair the pipe and safely restore gas supplies to customers affected.  NGN has since engaged the HSE and instructed an internal investigation to understand the full circumstances.

While the internal investigation is still ongoing, NGN can confirm that the gas pipe was damaged during essential gas mains replacement work which was being carried out by a specialist sub-contractor working on behalf of NGN.

John Richardson, Customer Operations Director at Northern Gas Networks said: “Every year NGN completes hundreds of projects to upgrade the gas mains throughout the North of England as part of our ongoing programme to modernise the gas network.  NGN has established safety procedures in place for working near pipelines and unexpected interruptions to gas supply are extremely rare.

“The safety of our engineers and members of the public is our priority and we are supporting the teams and contracting partners involved to ensure that we learn from what happened and put the appropriate measures in place so that safety is never compromised.

“We’d like to reiterate our thanks to everyone affected for your patience while we worked to restore gas supplies, and to the community for their tremendous support during this time.”

In the coming weeks NGN will be hosting a public meeting and inviting customers and stakeholders to join NGN colleagues to reflect on the incident and take a deeper look at the events of that weekend.  The purpose of the meeting is to give customers the opportunity to share their feedback and for NGN to gather valuable insight to enable them to continue to improve their response.

Anyone that smells gas or suspects carbon monoxide should call the National Gas Emergency Service immediately on 0800 111 999. This line is in operation 24-hours a day, seven days a week.