Newspaper Column – The Cornishman – 12/01/26

You won’t be alone if you conclude that if the same level of destruction, service outage, loss of life, risk to welfare of extremely vulnerable people which Cornwall and Scilly experienced following Storm Goretti had happened to London or the Home Counties the national media would have given it headline billing for days and the Government would have declared a National Emergency.  

On Monday I called on our House Speaker to grant me the right to call for a National Emergency response to help our communities. But instead, he granted one for East Grinstead, which has been suffering a water outage across 16,500 homes. Now, I have every sympathy for the beleaguered people of East Grinstead and would never seek to diminish the terrible circumstances they experience. But I’m certain the impact of the devastating storm experienced in Cornwall and on Scilly would dwarf that of the poor folk affected in the South East. More 50,000 local homes have experienced water and/or electricity outages here.  

I discovered the utility companies’ reported figures for homes cut off from water and electricity in Cornwall and Scilly to be unreliably optimistic and, from what I saw and have seen, is and has been significantly worse. Added to this, many places affected by outages have not been able to communicate with anyone because all power, broadband, mobile signal had been cut. Higher authorities who turned off most of the old and previously functioning analogue telephone system should reflect on their self-confidence that the much-vaunted digital technologies would be a resilient improvement. 

We’re very used to extreme storm conditions and have built resilience, as a consequence of our geographic position jutting out as we do into the Atlantic, exposed to the worst of the prevailing winds. I was born and brought up here and believe this was the worst in living memory. 

The impact on the most vulnerable, including the elderly, nursing home residents, those at home with complex end-of-life care packages etc was significant, left for days without mains power or water. Support packages have been threadbare for many. I remain concerned about the many lanes and remote places which have not yet been reached to check on the welfare of people living there. Service providers have told people to phone or follow advice on their websites or “just click on the app”! But of course, those most in need, most isolated and vulnerable have no means of doing any of these things. 

At the time of writing this there were still hundreds of homes without power and a similar number without water. Though my pleas for help and call for this to be declared a national emergency resulted in securing  hastily-arranged and brief online Emergency Ministerial Response Group meeting chaired by Defra Minister Mary Creagh at the weekend, I again experienced utility providers presenting the government with an overly optimistic, everything-is-under-control perspective, which didn’t reflect the reality on the ground.