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Mar 2024

Last Updated: 07/03/2024

Harrogate shops suffer four days of power cuts

by Lauren Ryan

| 06 Mar, 2024

Cornish Bakery Harrogate staff, Stephen Law store manager (right)

Northern Powergrid apologised today after one of Harrogate's most popular shopping streets suffered its fourth consecutive day of power outages.

Nine stores on James Street have suffered inconvenience and loss of trade due to loss of intermittent power.

Shops along the street told the Stray Ferret that they have had issues with their tills, shutters, phone lines, lighting and internet.

Another power outage occurred this morning with most shops regaining power at approximately 11am.

Robert Ogden co-owner of jewellers Ogden of Harrogate, said:

“Our area of James Street is into its fourth consecutive day of power-cuts. This means that we, and our neighbours have been unable to open or trade, even online.

"It has struck every day, but has then come on at midday or so, once the engineers have been on site, but has repeated.

"When I rang the helpline, no reasons were given, except that a fuse needed to be replaced at the substation. I was also told that ‘customers are expected to have a back up generator’ as the grid cannot guarantee uninterrupted power, but installing generators would be completely unrealistic."

Jigsaw clothes store told the Stray Ferret it was unable no trade at all on Sunday — like Ogden's, the store has electric shutters which were unable to open. Since then it has lost power for a couple of hours each day.

Wasted food

Most stores said they had also suffered no power in the morning until midday, which has particularly affected the new Cornish Bakery shop as it needs to prepare its goods early in the day.

Cornish Bakery Harrogate manager Stephen Law said:

"It has badly affected us, but the staff are all keeping positive, we are trying to do the best we can for our customers.

"Today the power came on at around 11am but we won’t be able to open properly until 12 because we have to turn on all of the machines and prep the shop. We have also had a lot of wasted food because anything we have proving overnight cannot be sold when the power goes out, which is bad for us and the environment, it hasn't been ideal."

Crew Clothing has also been impacted, with different parts of the shop affected at different times. On one day the lights were off; the next day the tills didn't work. Staff said this morning was their worst day yet, Rituals and Brora also confirmed they had faced power cuts.

Hotel Chocolat manager Hannah Cosgriff said:

"We have been affected every morning. It has definitely impacted trade on one of our busiest weeks — Mother’s Day and Easter are huge events for us and we are normally very busy.

"It’s very frustrating. Harrogate is a destination town, some customers aren’t local and want to have a day shopping on the street. People have been trying the doors all morning and as soon as we opened we were busy, we are paying our bills but can't provide a service to our customers when we can't open and each day we don't know what we are facing."

Piglet in Bed homeware has been able to resume trade as normal. The store has a different till system which allows it to work without power. Store manager Terina Daly said:

“We have been affected since Sunday but we are very lucky to have been able to continue trading."

She joked that only half of the lights working created "mood lighting".

Today a spokesperson for Northern Powergrid said:

“The power cut affecting commercial properties in the HG1 area of Harrogate was caused by a fault on the underground low voltage cable, resulting in a blown fuse, causing three power outages on 3, 4 and 5 March 2024.

"Our engineers have attended site to connect fault finding equipment to enable us to identify and repair the fault as soon as possible. Affected customers are now on supply and this should enable commercial customers to trade as usual. We would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused and we will keep customers informed of any future planned outages in the future.

Northern Powergrid added it was about to embark on a £5.5m scheme in the Harrogate area, that will "improve the resilience and reliability of the vital local electricity network".

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Wasted food

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