SCORES of Southampton residents who suffered power cuts over Christmas are still waiting for compensation – three months later.

More than 400 homes in the Redbridge area of the city were plunged into darkness on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day when electricity supplies failed.

Energy company SSE announced that it would pay out £75 in compensation for anyone affected on Christmas Day, while those who remained without power in the subsequent days would be given payments of £54 for the first 48 hours, and a further £54 for each subsequent 12-hour period.

However, according to Redbridge ward councillor Andrew Pope, SSE has not kept its promise of giving everyone affected compensation.

He said: “It has been three months and they are just creating confusion for residents, and giving promises that they have not kept.”

He added that the company failed to contact Southampton City Council when the outages happened.

Cllr Pope also pointed out that since the Christmas power cuts, there was another long-term outage in February that saw the same roads affected – and he believes that lessons were not learnt by SSE.

Although some residents have received the compensation, the memory of Christmas spent in the dark still haunts them.

Dad-of-three Arron Penny, from Maybush, saw his home plunged into darkness on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

He said: “I had to wrap my kids’ presents in the dark by torch, and our Christmas dinner was cheese and crackers. We were cold and had no heating. It was like being back in the dark ages. No amount of compensation can take away that my kids’ Christmas was ruined completely because of this.”

In a statement, SSE said: “We are committed to keeping the lights on for all our customers, and during the storms which have battered the south of England since Christmas our staff have worked tirelessly in very challenging conditions to give our customers the best service possible.”