Thousands of buildings across London have been left without electricity today after a major power cut struck the capital on Monday morning.
The outage is affecting homes and businesses across a wide swathe of the city, stretching from Shoreditch and the fringes of the Square Mile through Hackney, Dalston, Bethnal Green and Islington to pockets of west and north-west London. Rail passengers have also been caught up in the disruption, with train services affected and station information displays knocked out at one of the capital’s busiest terminals.
UK Power Networks, the company responsible for maintaining the electricity distribution network across London and the South East, has confirmed it is aware of the failure. In a short statement issued this morning, it said: “We are aware of a power cut affecting customers in the Shoreditch area.” The operator added: “We apologise for any inconvenience this is causing you.”
The scale of the outage is considerable. According to the network operator’s published information, 32 postcode sectors are affected, covering E1, E2, E5, E8 and E9 in the east, EC2A, EC2M and EC3A around Shoreditch and the City, N1 and N5 in the north, NW8 and W2 in the north-west and west, and IG3 further east.
That footprint takes in some of the capital’s busiest and most densely populated neighbourhoods. Shoreditch’s bars, restaurants and creative workplaces, the Victorian terraces of Dalston and Hackney, the residential streets of Islington and Highbury, and commercial districts on the edge of the City all fall within the affected postcodes. Thousands of households waking up on Monday morning found lights, heating and appliances dead, while businesses opening for the week faced tills, card machines and equipment with no power.
The timing has compounded the disruption. With the cut striking on a Monday morning, many Londoners working from home have been left unable to power laptops and routers, while high street shops and cafes in the affected areas have been forced to trade in the dark or keep their shutters down.
The railways have not escaped either. Services calling at Essex Road are affected by the outage, and at London Liverpool Street the departure information boards have gone blank. The station, which handles routes from Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire alongside London Overground and Elizabeth line services, relies on its display screens to manage some of the heaviest passenger flows in the country.
It is the latest disruption to hit the capital’s transport network, coming after part of the Windrush line was suspended while emergency services responded to an incident on the tracks. Passengers travelling through the affected areas today are advised to check live departure information and allow extra time for their journeys.
Despite the scale of the outage, no official explanation has yet been given for what caused the failure. UK Power Networks has not said whether the fault lies with damaged cables, a substation problem or another issue on the high-voltage network, and no estimated time for the restoration of supplies has been announced.
For residents left in the dark, there are practical steps worth taking. Households should check whether neighbouring properties have also lost power, which helps establish whether the problem sits with the network or an individual building. Fridge and freezer doors should be kept closed to keep food cold for as long as possible, and sensitive electrical equipment is best unplugged until power returns to guard against surges when it comes back.
Anyone who relies on powered medical equipment, or who has elderly or vulnerable neighbours, should make sure support is in place. Electricity network operators run priority services registers for customers in vulnerable circumstances, offering extra help during outages.
UK Power Networks maintains the vast web of cables, substations and transformers that delivers electricity to more than eight million properties across London, the South East and the East of England. Outages on this scale — hitting thousands of buildings simultaneously — are relatively rare and typically point to a fault on a major part of the network rather than a localised problem.
People living in Hackney, one of the worst-affected boroughs, will be watching for updates closely, as will commuters already braced for disruption across the capital’s transport network.
This is a developing story. Our live blog above will carry the latest updates as engineers work to restore supplies and more details emerge.
