Contact Energy has cut gas bottle deliveries to several customers in the past month because of health and safety concerns.
Four customers were informed Contact Energy would not continue to deliver lpg bottles to their properties because of concerns expressed by its drivers, Contact head of communications Shaun Jones said.
The decision not to deliver was at the discretion of the company's drivers and not because of the Health and Safety at Work Act, which came into force last month, or because of a review.
"The safety of both our customers and our employees is a real priority at Contact and if our drivers feel that delivery to a site is unsafe for any reason, we support their decision not to deliver,'' Mr Jones said.
"If a decision is made not to deliver, we will then contact the customer concerned to seek possible solutions. If the safety concern can be alleviated, then we are more than happy to review our decision.
"In the past month, after health and safety discussions with our delivery drivers, we have ceased lpg delivery to four properties in Dunedin. These were seen as posing a significant safety risk and no alternative option was available.''
Ability to deliver was taken on a case-by-case basis and those properties were not within a single area of Dunedin, Mr Jones said.
The company tried to make alternative arrangement for delivery in some cases, but "we need to be comfortable that any alternative solutions are safe for both our drivers and for the customer''.
"We give our drivers the ability to make the call whether they feel it is safe to deliver to a property and back them 100% on these calls,'' he said.
"We want to ensure they can go home safely to their families at the end of each working day.''
The issues affected only a small number of the company's 70,000 customers who received lpg delivery, he said.
