Long-distance forecasters are predicting that the country is facing its coldest weather for a decade, putting lives at risk and forcing businesses to lay off workers.

The CBI said that there were only 11 days’ gas held in reserve. In comparison, other European countries keep an average of 55 days in reserve. The Met Office has already put the energy industry, the NHS and the Government on high alert. Now there are fears that Britain could run out of fuel.

Sir Digby Jones, the Director-General of the CBI, said: “If we have a cold winter, we are going to throw the switch; businesses will shut down.”

The National Grid has identified emergency measures to ensure that power is maintained to homeowners. Under the plans, manufacturers who use large amounts of gas for industrial processes would be required to shut down factories on very cold days.

Britain has not had a particularly cold winter for ten years, but some experts believe that temperatures over the coming months could plummet as low as the winters of the 1970s.

Paul Simons, The Times weatherman, said that the shift in temperature was influenced by a phenomonon known as North Atlantic Oscillation, or NAO, influenced by a lowpressure system over Iceland and high pressure over the warm Azores islands in the sub-tropical Atlantic. When the Icelandic pressure rises and the Azores pressure dips, Britain catches blasts of bitterly cold air.

He said: “In the 1940s the NAO turned negative and brought some of the coldest European winters of the 20th century, including the bitter freezes that helped to defeat Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Another bout of negative NAOs in the 1960s included the worst winter for more than 200 years, when homes were buried under snow and ice floes drifted in the English Channel.

“The Met Office is forecasting a negative NAO this winter. Although they cannot tell how severe the weather will be, the past ten winters had such ridiculously mild weather that even an average British winter will come as a rude shock.”

Last week Ofgem and National Grid Transco gave warning that gas supplies were at their lowest for ten years. The energy market regulator said that large industrial users and gas-fired power stations would be switched off in the event of a severe winter. Gas is used to fuel around two fifths of the country’s power stations.

Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, said: “It’s not about switching off the domestic customers but there could be problems for industry.”

The National Grid has not imposed compulsory measures to conserve power supplies since the blackouts caused by the miners’ strikes during the 1970s.

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