Electricity North West (ENW) and United Utilities (UU) have worked alongside emergency service teams “around the clock” over the weekend while the government convened an emergency Cobra meeting in a bid to restore power and water to affected communities.
ENW said at lunchtime on Monday that it had restored power to all but around 3,000 homes in the Lancaster and Cumbria regions after 55,000 households were left without power late on Saturday night after severe flooding at Lancaster’s main substation.
In its latest update ENW said that 2,657 properties in Cumbria and 300 in Lancaster and surrounding areas remain without power.
ENW incident manager Steve Cox said the network operators teams “have worked round the clock” and continue their efforts. However, Cox warned that the Cumbria substation remained underwater, which had restricted access for the teams.
“We will continue to work with the emergency services and our other partners in Cumbria to gain access to our sites and restore power to those still waiting to be connected as soon as the waters have receeded,” Cox said.
ENW said its flood defences at Kendal and Carlisle substations have held, protecting supplies to 110,000 homes.
In addition, United Utilities has been hit by floods with water treatment works submerged by floodwater, lack of electricity for pumping stations and burst mains affecting water supply to its customers in Cumbria and Lancashire.
The water treatment works supplying Keswick was still submerged on Monday morning and one of the two water reservoirs supplying the town centre has also been affected by the floods, UU said, with around 150 homes in the Borrowdale valley, and 200 homes in Langwathby and Lancaster also without water.
Wastewater services have also been affected at treatments works in Carlisle, Kendal, Garstang and Lancashire.
It expects the Keswick works to be back up and running by “later tomorrow”, according to a Monday morning update.
“Work is underway, in very challenging conditions, to get these sites functioning as normal,” said UU.
“We are contacting all vulnerable customers who we know live in the affected area to check if there is any help we can offer,” the water company added.
A statement from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the government took the risk of flooding “very seriously”.
“Ahead of this winter, we have put in place over 100 specialist flood rescue teams across the country. We are delivering on our manifesto commitment to build 1,400 new flood defence schemes that will better protect 300,000 more homes.
“That’s an extra £2.3 billion of capital investment to help our most at-risk communities,” a statement from Defra said.