Hundreds of homes without power after underground cable incident

Hundreds of homes in Greater Manchester and on Merseyside have been left without power due to problems with an underground cable.

SP Electricity North West (ENW) said 289 properties in St Helens, 149 in Bury, 87 in Oldham and 28 in Rochdale had been affected.

It said the outage had been caused by “an unexpected incident” with an underground cable and stressed that it was not weather-related.

ENW said it had either sent or was preparing to send teams to all affected areas, with electricity supplies provisionally expected to be restored between 10:20 and 12:40 GMT.