MANWEB
Encyclopedia
Merseyside
Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary, and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool...
, North Wales
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
and (despite the name) parts of Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
. It is now part of Scottish Power
Scottish Power
ScottishPower Ltd. is a vertically integrated energy company with its headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but in 2006 it became a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola...
, itself a subsidiary of the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
energy company Iberdrola
Iberdrola
Iberdrola , headquartered in Bilbao, is a private utility with a global footprint and over 150 years of experience...
.
It was originally created in 1947 as the nationalised Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board in the Electricity Act 1947
Electricity Act 1947 (UK)
The Electricity Act 1947 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that nationalised the numerous municipal and privately owned electricity generation and supply utilities in Great Britain...
but was privatised
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
in 1990 to become Manweb plc.
It was purchased by Scottish Power
Scottish Power
ScottishPower Ltd. is a vertically integrated energy company with its headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but in 2006 it became a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola...
in 1995, and subsequently become SP Manweb plc. The Manweb name continued to be used alongside the Scottish Power logo on home and retail publications up until mid-2007, when it was replaced by "ScottishPower". However, the Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales electricity distributor continues as SP Manweb plc, which is managed along with the Scottish transmission operators SP Distribution plc and SP Transmission plc as SP Energy Networks. A fourth company, SP Power Systems Ltd maintains the distribution networks for these each of these companies.