If you smell gas or are worried about gas safety, call 0800 111 999 at any time of the day or night. Find out what to do if you think you have a gas emergency.

Customer Care Team
0800 040 7766

customercare@northerngas.co.uk

Connections Team
0800 040 7766

gasconnections@northerngas.co.uk

Press Office
0113 322 7950

Out of hours: 0113 322 7978

Stakeholder Relations Team

stakeholder@northerngas.co.uk

Smell Gas?
0800 111 999
Day or night
Non-emergency calls
Customer Care Team
0800 040 7766
About us Previous Plan 2013-2021 Heart of the community Carbon Monoxide

Community involvement

As a utility company, we’re in a good position to deliver added value to communities in our region.

Our region contains some of the most economically challenged communities in the UK, from remote parts of rural Northumberland to deprived areas of Bradford.

As a company that’s embedded in these neighbourhoods, we feel it’s our duty to support communities and individuals facing difficulties, such as fuel poverty and associated forms of vulnerability.

Our budgets and time is limited, so we rely on expert partners to help us reach those customers in need.

  • Carbon Monoxide
  • Warm & healthy
  • Education
  • Stakeholders

Taking on the 'silent killer'

Carbon Monoxide (CO) poisoning claims around 60 lives each year in England and Wales.

Caused by the incomplete combustion of natural gas (e.g. due to faulty boilers or other gas appliance) CO can’t be seen, smelt or tasted, and is often referred to as ‘the silent killer.’

We educate and protect the region against CO, through schools workshops; customer briefings in the home; public awareness campaigns and by equipping all our emergency engineers with handheld CO detectors.

We also work closely with other gas distributors and charities on joint activity.

Outputs - a detailed look

This table takes a detailed look at our performance throughout the regulatory period from 2013 – 2021, known as RIIO-GD1. Simply click the yellow tooltip to read a brief commentary on what the statistic means, and see how we performed.

CO detection technology Target
2013/14
2014/15
2015/16
2016/17
2017/18
2018/19
2019/20
2020/21
 Status
Providing emergency engineers with smart CO detection technology
?

We have completed our roll out of life saving CO detection equipment for our emergency gas engineers. 1,200 engineers now use this technology each day.

 200
200
200
200
Business as usual
Business as usual
Business as usual
Business as usual
Business as usual
On target

Case studies

We’re involved in a range of work to educate and protect the region against Carbon Monoxide (CO).

Engaging on the doorstep

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We train our emergency engineers to deliver CO awareness sessions following call outs to local homes.

Engineers use a dedicated app to structure these conversations and gather feedback.

More than 20,000 customers completed a CO questionnaire between 2015-2018, raising levels of regional awareness.

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Educating future generations

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Engaging children with CO messages from primary school age helps to ensure that future generations are well-informed and protected.

Our education outreach programme includes Safety Seymour workshops – which use an appealing mascot and structured sessions to reinforce messages.

We run a Young Presenter of the Year competition for students aged 12-17, with participants often choosing CO as their presentation topic. And we ran our first NGN Primary Challenge in 2016/17, which saw local schools create their own gas safety videos.

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Standing firm against CO

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In June 2016 we became a British Plumbing Employers Council (BPEC) accredited centre for carbon monoxide (CO) awareness training.

The British Plumbing Employers Council works in close partnership with further education colleges and private training providers, identifying education and training needs for those working within the building and engineering industries.

We’ve put over 40 people through CO awareness training to date, from Customer Care Officers to local stakeholders including the Women’s Institute, local scout groups, schools and the air cadets.

By becoming an accredited centre for CO awareness training we can support local communities resulting in delivery of these vital safety messages to more of our customers.

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Customer CO briefings

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When our emergency engineers are called out to a customer’s home, once they have made everything safe, they often take the opportunity to remind the customer about Carbon Monoxide (CO).

They deliver a quick verbal briefing about the signs and symptoms associated with CO, and leave behind some literature.

More than 7,600 of these briefings were delivered in 2016/17. Customers who have called us out because they smelled gas are especially receptive to the safety message.

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