Shops forced to shut by York city centre power cut

Shops in York city centre were forced to close for several hours today after a power cut left them in darkness.

Businesses and households in the YO1 area, including Stonegate, were hit by the outage at 7.42am Monday morning (4 November).

Retailers on the southern side of Stonegate were affected, from Joules to the Pyramid Gallery, including York’s all-year Christmas shop, Käthe Wohlfahrt.

Handwritten notes in the front windows explained the reason for their closure to disappointed customers.

A Northern Powergrid spokeswoman confirmed that power has now been restored.

She said that at around 7:42am this morning Northern Powergrid received a call from one of the businesses on Stonegate reporting a power cut, adding:

• Our engineer attended site and confirmed that the service cable to the business had inadvertently been damaged.

  It was necessary, for safety reasons, to isolate power supplies from the local substation at 11:40am affecting 24 customers in the area.

  Repairs were carried out as quickly as possible and power reinstated at 1:10pm.

  We’d like to thank all of our customers for their patience whilst our teams worked to get the lights back on.