Serious flaws in Western Power's management of its 620,000 wood poles have been uncovered in a 2008 Energy Safety audit.

The audit - released today by Energy Safety director Ken Bowron - revealed gaps in design and the existence of old, high risk, unsupported jarrah poles in rural areas in urgent need of replacement.

"In particular, I was not satisfied with Western Power's progress in addressing three critical safety issues we identified in our 2006 audit," Mr Bowron said.

"There were serious deficiencies in pole inspection practices and the ability to compare pole strength with actual loads.

"Secondly, many installed poles were far too old and no longer had the necessary strength, particularly in rural areas.

Mr Bowron said Western Power should replace some 15,000 poles a year but exactly how many replacements had occurred was unclear due to an unavailability of data.

"But the figure has been as low as 2000 to 3000 per year," he said.

Mr Bowron said Western Power would be required to remedy the three critical safety issues as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, a Western Power spokeswoman rejected claims that questioned the reliability of its pole data.

"Pole data is stored in Western Power's corporate asset data bases and is collected and stored in a similar way to other utilities around Australia," she said.

"Western Power disagrees with Energy Safety's figure on the number of poles replaced annually.

"Western Power replaced 5094 poles in 2006-07, 6070 poles in 2007-08 and this year it will replace in the order of 9,000 wood poles, in stark contrast to the 2,000-3,000 quoted by Energy Safety."

The spokeswoman also said substantial improvements had been made since the report was compiled.

"Western Power has decreased in the previous year the number of unassisted pole failures by over 20 per cent and increased the number of poles reinforced by 30 per cent," she said.

"In its latest submission to the regulator for funding, Western Power has sought to replace or remove 22,500 poles based on their condition and 11,500 poles from various programs, including the state undergrounding program, regional power improvement program, targeted reliability and maintenance programs, as well as 34,000 pole reinforcements.

"In total, nearly 70,000 wood poles will be addressed in the next three years, which is significantly above the volumes that other Australian utilities are operating at."

PERTH LISA CALAUTTI