Internet, power and water 'working as normal' as people stay at home

Severn Trent said it was currently seeing no issues with its services, but was working to make its staff as safe as possible in the coming weeks.

BT said its internet network was built to accommodate peak capacity at an evening – when people are playing online games and watching streaming services – and that it could maintain that throughout the day if necessary.

David Lavender, of Severn Trent, said the company was working to make sure essential services were running as normal.

"Following updated government advice, we’ve increased the measures we’ve taken to protect our teams and our customers from the spread of coronavirus," he said. "We want to reassure our customers that we have plans for this sort of situation and we’re putting them into practice.

"For example, we’ll be checking on customer health before going into their home or business and we’re increasing hygiene at our sites by deep cleaning offices and vehicles, and have already adopted a policy of self-isolation.

"We aren’t currently experiencing any issues with our services as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

"Our priority is to make sure everyone’s as safe as they can be while ensuring we keep our services running for all of our customers."

Howard Watson, BT Group chief technology and information officer, said: “We have more than enough capacity in our UK broadband network to handle mass-scale home-working in response to COVID-19.

"Our network is built to accommodate evening peak network capacity, which is driven by data-heavy things like video streaming and game downloads, for example.

"By comparison, data requirements for work-related applications like video calls and daytime email traffic represent a fraction of this. Even if the same heavy data traffic that we see each evening were to run throughout the daytime, there is still enough capacity for work-applications to run simultaneously."

In a message on Western Power's website, chief executive Phil Swift said all essential works would continue.

"As the coronavirus pandemic develops, I want to reassure customers that WPD's operations continue," he said.

"We keep the lights on for nearly 8 million customers in the Midlands, south west England and south Wales and we take this responsibility very seriously.

"Our long-term investment means we have a high performing, resilient and smart network to rely on. In addition, we have well-tested emergency planning protocols in place and robust supply chains to ensure we continue to have access to the equipment we need.

"I can reassure customers that all essential works will continue, including a swift response to any unplanned power cuts, but we will need to take certain safety measures when visiting customer properties."