Light at the end of the tunnel for Sheffield residents left in dark with power cuts

The power outage has impacted street lighting on Aylward Road, Aylward Close and Northern Avenue in Arbourthorne, with residents saying that they feel nervous going out in the dark at night.

Claire Bridges, who lives on Aylward Close, said: “It’s been so dark without the streetlights for over two weeks. People already feel nervous going out at night and this makes that fear even worse. We just want to get the power supply sorted.”

Coun Sophie Wilson, who inspected the area by head torch said: “Residents need to know there’s light at the end of the tunnel. It’s been over two weeks since Northern Powergrid was made aware of this fault and it’s not acceptable that it hasn’t been prioritised and fixed.”

Northern Powergrid said it was working with Sheffield Council to address any issues that were as a result of its network.

A spokesman said: “We had a complex fault on our network which caused a power cut for around 145 residents in early February, and we carried an immediate temporary repair to restore power supplies to affected local homes.

“We were also made aware at the time by the local authority that some streetlights were not working.

“Between February 3 and 9 we carried out a full permanent repair on our network and confirmed with the local authority that this work had been fully completed.

“On February 18 we were contacted by the council to advise the lights were not working. Checks were carried out today to ensure the lights can receive power from our network and all the lights are now back working.

“We thank local residents for their patience and if any of the streetlights do go out again we would urge them to report them immediately to the council.”

Northern Powergrid said it would work with the council to look at sectioning lights into smaller groups so if there were any future problems, fewer streetlights would be affected.

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