A PENSIONER says he is fed up with power cuts ruining his meals and cutting off his favourite TV programmes after his home was hit by 66 outages in six years.

Ken Stanbrook, 75, has kept a record of every incident since the first on October 28, 2008, caused his home in Wootton-by-Woodstock, to lose power.

The pensioner, who lives with his wife Pat, 72, in Milford Place, said he had been told by electricity providers SSE that many of the cuts have been caused by birds flying into power cables.

He said: “We have had power cuts lasting up to 13-and-a-half hours and the most recent one was on October 22.

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“Some of the power cuts only last for a minute and then the power comes back on but that is enough to cause disruption. It has ruined many a dinner and we sit in the dark at night when it happens.

“We get half way through cooking dinner and it goes off and ruins it. You are on tenterhooks all the time when you are cooking or watching TV.”

Mr Stanbrook said the power cuts were causing him safety concerns.

He said: “It is dangerous as well and we have to keep a torch by our chairs in the evenings.

“It isn’t very safe especially if you are going downstairs and it goes off. SSE told me lots of the power cuts were caused by bird strikes and one was caused by a cow because it was rubbing against a pole that holds the wires.”

A spokesman for SSE apologised to Mr Stanbrook and said engineers would try to rectify the problems.

He said: “There have been an unusually high number of bird strikes.

“We have been in touch with Mr Stanbrook and we can only sympathise but we have tried to reassure him that we have invested a lot of money to set our network right.

“I would like to thank customers for their patience but our engineers are absolutely committed to solving these problems as soon as possible.”

Mr Stanbrook added: “It is not just my house. It has affected all the houses in Milford Place and it seems it is always going on down here.

“SSE told us that they were doing all they could to stop all the power cuts.

“They told us that three years ago but it has made no difference.”


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