MORE than a thousand homes in the rural GU10 postcode area south of Farnham were again left without power on Wednesday.

The latest power cut occurred shortly after 9am on December 27, when a fault developed on the Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) overhead network which supplies electricity to Churt and the surrounding area, causing the power to go off for approximately 1,200 properties.

By lunchtime the number of customers off supply had been reduced to 400, and by 3pm this number was further reduced to 97. Mobile generation was brought in to restore the power to the remaining 97 customers, with everyone back on shortly after midnight.

The cause of the fault was identified as two pieces of equipment on the overhead network which had been damaged, possibly by the snow and wind which affected the area on Wednesday.

The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for rain and snow, valid between 6pm on Tuesday, and 11am Wednesday, anticipating travel delays and possible flooding. A flood alert was also issued for the Upper River Wey in the early hours of Wednesday.

It comes after an earlier power cut affected 1,225 customers in the GU10 postcode on December 9, forcing the closure of All Saints’ School in Tilford.

A SSEN spokesman said: “When a situation like this occurs, our priority is to restore the power as safely and as quickly as possible, and our engineers were able to restore the majority of customers by re-routing supplies to different pars of the network.

“SSEN would like to apologise to customers affected by the power cut, and thank everyone for their patience and understanding as our engineers worked to restore supplies as safely and as quickly as possible.”