The East Midlands Electricity Board (EMEB) was formed in 1947 as one of the United Kingdom's twelve area electricity boards specified under the Electricity Act 1947. In 1990 it was floated on the stock market as East Midlands Electricity plc, which went through several changes of ownership.

Supply area

The board covered a large area: from

Chesterfield Chesterfield may refer to: Places Canada * Rural Municipality of Chesterfield No. 261, Saskatchewan * Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut United Kingdom * Chesterfield, Derbyshire, a market town in England ** Chesterfield (UK Parliament constitue ...

in Derbyshire, to

Newport Pagnell Newport Pagnell is a town and civil parish in the City of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. The Office for National Statistics records Newport Pagnell as part of the Milton Keynes urban area. It is separated from the rest of the urban ...

(near modern-day

Milton Keynes Milton Keynes ( ) is a city and the largest settlement in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was over . The River Great Ouse forms its northern boundary; a tributary ...

), in

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

, and from Coventry in the west to Skegness in the east.

Structure

The organisation's headquarters were at

Mapperley Hall Mapperley Hall is a country house located at 51 Lucknow Avenue in the Mapperley Park conservation area of Nottingham, England. Built by Ichabod Wright in 1792, it was the home of the Wright family of bankers until the end of the nineteenth centu ...

in Mapperley Park, Nottingham in the 1960s, then on Coppice Road in

Arnold Arnold may refer to: People * Arnold (given name), a masculine given name * Arnold (surname), a German and English surname Places Australia * Arnold, Victoria, a small town in the Australian state of Victoria Canada * Arnold, Nova Scotia Uni ...

, a suburb of the city. The board was responsible for the purchase of electricity from the electricity generator (the Central Electricity Generating Board from 1958) and its distribution and sale of electricity to customers. The key people on the board were: Chairman A.N. Todd (1964) A. H. Kenyon (1967), Deputy Chairman A. H. Kenyon (1964) P. Sydney (1967), full-time members J. A. MacKerrell (1964, 1967) R. A. York (1967).''Electricity Council publicity brochures'' 1964 and 1967

History

The board was required to supply electricity to homes and businesses, as regulated by the Act, and under terms of reference from the Electricity Council and the CEGB. In many towns, the board opened showrooms, to provide customer service facilities such as paying bills, as well as demonstrating and supplying the latest electrical goods to customers. The total number of customers supplied by the Board was: The post-war period was one of fast growth for the electricity industry. The pre-war National Grid system was vastly expanded, and many new power stations were opened across the region. One major customer was

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...

: when the West Coast Main Line was electrified in the 1960s, and the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

in the 1980s, the electricity boards were required to supply the lines passing through their territory with electricity direct from the National Grid. The amount of electricity, in GWh, sold by East Midlands Electricity Board was:

Privatisation

East Midlands Electricity shop, High Street - geograph

In 1987, the Conservatives’ election manifesto committed the party to further privatisation of nationalised industries, and the electricity industry was to be one of these. In March 1990, the board became East Midlands Electricity plc, a new regional electricity company. In December 1990 it floated on the stock market. Although operations continued as usual for a few years, the business began to be separated and broken up. The electricity showroom and sales business merged with those of other companies into the Powerhouse chain, in 1994/5. In November 1995, the company split into three divisions of distribution, metering and supply. The company was bought by Dominion Resources for £1.3bn in December 1996. In September 1998, EME's distribution and supply business was bought by Powergen for £1.9bn, ensuring the business remained

vertically integrated In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply ...

. The EME brand was not replaced until 1999, although the distribution business continued under the EME brand until it merged with

Central Networks Western Power Distribution was the trade name, trading identity of four electricity distribution companies in the United Kingdom: WPD South West (operating in South West England), WPD South Wales (in South Wales) and WPD Midlands (two companie ...

in 2004.

References

External links