'Digger accident' leaves 1,300 homes without power

More than 1,300 homes and a council headquarters have been left without power after a digger reportedly hit a high-voltage cable during construction work.

Energy company SSE said the properties were in the BA14 area of Trowbridge in Wiltshire and that it had been alerted to the damage at 09:31 BST on Wednesday.

Wiltshire Council said on its Facebook page that County Hall, its administrative headquarters, had been shut due to the outage but was now open again, although some on-site services were unavailable.

An SSE spokesperson it was "working hard to make the situation safe" and repair the damage. It hopes to have restored power by 15:00.

The spokesperson said: "A construction company operating in the area appears to have accidently hit one of our high-voltage cables while carrying out excavation works with a digger.

"The incident was reported to us promptly, and one of our specially trained engineers was on site within 15 minutes of the outage occurring, to assess the damage and co-ordinate power restoration work.

"We'd like to thank people in the area for their patience and understanding while we respond to the damage that's been done to the network; we're working hard to restore their power as safely and quickly as we can."

Trowbridge Library is also closed due to the power cut, but users can still return books via a letterbox at the building.

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