More than 1,000 homes still without power on fifth night since Storm Amy

Work is ongoing to restore power to more than 1,000 homes following Storm Amy, which battered the country on Friday and into the weekend.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said that, as of 4.30pm on Tuesday, its teams had reconnected 87,000 households and that work is under way to restore power for the remaining 1,400.

The transmission network company said: “SSEN’s huge operation to restore power to homes is making continued progress, with the vast majority of households due to have their electricity back on by the end of today.

“This work is particularly focused on specific areas of the Great Glen, the Fort William area and Ardnamurchan.

“Today, even more tree-cutting and engineering teams have been at work in these areas to further speed up the reconnection process.”

SSEN said hot food is still being provided in communities affected by power cuts and that so far more than 20,000 free hot meals had been served by food vans and local businesses.

The company said: “The remaining network faults are complex and spread out over a wide area, which is why even more teams have been deployed in the Highlands to tackle these particularly challenging repairs as safely and quickly as possible.”

Storm Amy brought “extremely damaging” winds when it began to hit Ireland and the UK on Friday, with gusts of almost 100mph recorded in some exposed coastal areas.

Nik Wheeler, SSEN’s head of customer operations for the north of Scotland, said on Tuesday afternoon: “As the enormous job of fixing 700 separate instances of damage on the network enters its final stages, I want to reiterate how grateful I am to everyone – but especially those who’ve been without power for an extended period – for their understanding and patience.

“We’re doing all we can to get the vast majority of homes back on by the end of today, but for a few individual areas, this could go into tomorrow. These customers are being contacted directly.

“I know the time it’s taken to reconnect some households has made for a very tough few days for many of our customers. We’re sorry about this; it’s been down the exceptional circumstances of Storm Amy.

“We’ve got people back on as safely and as quickly as we could in particularly tough conditions, using every single resource at our disposal.

“We’ve once again offered hot food provision in a number of affected areas during the day, and I’d like to remind people of the compensation and reimbursement they’ll be entitled to following this storm, and I urge them to submit any claims soon.

“Our teams are expecting a large number of these to come in and we’ll process these as soon as we can.”

Storm Amy also caused widespread disruption to the rail network over the weekend, with more than 420 incidents reported, including fallen trees and debris on the tracks.

On Monday, First Minister John Swinney described Storm Amy as an “illustration of climate problem” that showed the need for action.

Speaking to the PA news agency, he said: “The fact that we’re having storms of this nature, and we’re experiencing the degree of disruption that we are facing, is a practical demonstration of the effects of climate change.

“These storms are happening more frequently. They are disrupting power supply, they are disrupting people’s lives as a consequence.”