THE cause of a massive power outage which hit large parts of Wellington and the surrounding area on Monday morning (September 22) was put down to a building site contractor cutting through underground cables.

More than 2,400 properties suddenly lost their electricity supply at 8.44 am but almost 1,300 were reconnected within three minutes.

The outage particularly affected the north side of Wellington from Longforth Road to Tonedale and also the Priory estate and St John’s Primary School, and the Chelston, Westpark, and Foxmoor business parks.

It stretched as far as Ham and Nynehead, although National Grid said power supplies to all properties were restored shortly after 9 am.

However, despite the National Grid claim, some properties in Westpark, Chelston, said they were still without power later in the day while the Lidl supermarket and Willowbrook garden centre also lost electricity during the afternoon.

Residents on the Monument View estate, in Rockwell Green, reported power ‘cutting in and out’ throughout the afternoon.

It was the sixth large power outage to hit a similar area of Wellington and surrounds in the past four months, after four cuts in June and another in July.

A National Grid Electricity Distribution spokesperson said: “A power cut occurred this morning in Wellington following damage to our network caused by a third party.

“Underground cables were damaged at Chelston during excavations at a building site, regrettably leading to a loss of power for 1,127 customers.

“Electricity supplies were restored in about an hour and engineers are now carrying out repairs.”

Two of the June power cuts were put down to farming equipment hitting high voltage overhead cables and saw National Grid appeal to farmers to stay alert when working near electricity pylons.

The whole of the town was without power for about two hours during the first incident.