Tuesday 29 December 2015

Hundreds of homes and firms still without power

More than 800 households and businesses still have no access to electricity in Northern England as the region struggles with flooding.

While progress has been made in reconnecting thousands of homes to the electricity networks, many are still off supply in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, Leeds, York and the Upper Calder Valley.

Northern Powergrid said flood water and flood damage have so far prevented restoration of the last 749 properties while 88 Electricity North West customers still don't have power.

The latter company said it has however restored the power network and connected the last two generators to substations in Rochdale.

It added it will continue to get the remaining customers on supply today and also put resources in place to respond to the high winds and rainfall forecast for tonight.

Chris Fox, Incident Manager for Electricity North West, said: “We have restored our power network and will spend today removing generators and reconnecting our customers to the network.

“It has been a challenging time for the communities in our region and we continue to be grateful for the goodwill and support that has seen shown to our colleagues by all of our customers."

Northern Powergrid added it has so far restored power to more than 36,200 homes and businesses out of the 37,000 properties affected by Storm Eva since Boxing Day.

The electricity distribution firm's support teams are in various locations to assist customers.

The company stated: "We are carrying out post flood inspections of our assets and completing the necessary repair work as quickly as possible. We are also working with the energy suppliers and their meter operators who are carrying our repairs to their assets where they have been damaged."