Hundreds affected by a six-hour power cut

MORE than 2,000 properties in three areas of Leicestershire were affected by a power cut that lasted for several hours on Monday night last week (May 16).

Delays meant hundreds of homeowners were left in the dark for at least six hours.

The power cut happened at around 7.45pm in the LE9 postcode, affecting properties in the Stoney Stanton, Sapcote and Middlefield areas.

Western Power Distribution (WPD), which oversees power in the area, confirmed the outage happened after a fault developed on its high voltage network and was more complicated than originally thought to fix.

Initially, when the power went out, WPD had issued statements online promising residents that power would be restored by 9.30pm at the latest. However, this wasn’t the case for all involved.

While 1,200 homes had their power back on within an hour, WPD confirmed their work suffered setbacks along the way. This meant hundreds of homeowners were without power for at least six more hours.

“Engineers were able to restore 1,200 properties within an hour, but work to restore the remainder in stages was hit by delays. Unfortunately, an issue with overhead lines caused delays to the repairs,” a WPD spokesman said.

The power distributor confirmed all affected properties had their power restored by 3.40am yesterday morning. However, WPD said work to remedy the fault was not over. “Repairs to fix the fault are ongoing. Engineers will be working on it to repair the fault but no further details are no known at present. We cannot estimate a timeframe for the repairs,” continued the spokesman. “Western Power Distribution offers its sincere apologies to anyone who was affected by the power cut.”