A spokesman for NEDL, Northern Electrics Distribution Limited, said five of the power losses were due to bad weather but 11 had other causes.

The most recent, on 5 May – Bank Holiday Monday – was caused by an underground cable fault.

It affected 760 NEDL customers and left some of them without power for more than ten hours. Generators finally had to be taken into the area to provide emergency electricity.

The spokesman said: "We keep a list of our vulnerable customers including people who rely on dialysis machines and stair lifts and we help to get them to hospital where necessary.

"We also send out our customer ambassadors to check where people need help and in addition to taking in generators we supply winter warmer packs with wind-up radios so they can listen to information put out by us, as well as gloves, hats and flasks of hot drinks. We also liaise with local parish councillors about the situation.

"But in the remote rural areas we often have to get our engineers and equipment over fields and moorland and it's a major operation especially getting it all across ditches.

"We're aware of the high number of losses of power in the area and our engineers are investigating to see if we can find the reason and rectify it."

The areas most affected are Fryup, Danby, Castleton, Lealholm, Westerdale, Glaisdale and Commondale. But a major power loss on 29 February, due to gales, was at a high voltage station in Boosbeck in East Cleveland which supplies 1,000 customers, some of them also in the Upper Esk Valley.

Most of the power lines in the area are overhead and on exposed sites and as a result are extremely vulnerable to bad weather. One on 31 January to 1 February which affected Danby and Fryup was caused when gales brought down trees and debris onto the lines. And on 6 April 1,000 NEDL customers in the area lost their supply when lighting struck the lines.

E-mail us with your experiences or views on the power cuts to editorial@whitbygazette.co.uk

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