Business owners hit out over Stourbridge power cuts
Cars were left stranded in the air on ramps and gym customers were stopped in their tracks in a spate of power cuts on a Stourbridge industrial estate.
Businesses on the Mill Race Lane estate, just off Stourbridge ring road, have suffered at least three power cuts – each lasting several hours – since Thursday.
Western Power Distribution has apologised to the companies affected and pledged that it is doing its best to repair an "intermittent fault" in an underground cable that is causing a sub-station fuse to keep blowing.
But the power company warned there may be further cuts as engineers try to deliberately cause the fuse to blow in an effort to discover the cause of the problem.
"It's been an absolute nightmare," said Linda Hughes, receptionist at Body Wise gym, where dozens of members have had to be sent home or were unable to start their training sessions due to the loss of power. "We had members in the gym, the lights all went out and, on Friday morning, we couldn't open our electric shutters because of a power cut the night before."
Ben Claridge, supervisor at Kwik Fit, said: "We've had vehicles stuck on ramps, and it's cost us business, as well as inconveniencing our customers." And Philip Battin, managing director of Tile Trend, said: "The disruption has been enormous – and I am now putting together a claim against Western Power Distribution because it's stopped our business. We haven't even been able to get the roller shutters up on our warehouse to deliver to customers."
The businesses were first hit on Thursday and again on Saturday and Monday.
At Kwik Fit, Mr Claridge said: "We lost power for three or four hours on Thursday, a couple of hours on Saturday and from 2pm until just after 4.30pm on Monday. We couldn't use any of our ramps or apparatus, and the only part of our system still working was our computers.
"We had vehicles stuck up on ramps and missed out on quite a lot of business. Customers who needed their vehicles were inconvenienced."
Mr Claridge and other companies affected had been speculating that work on the town's new Tesco at the Crown Centre could have caused the cuts but Jocelyn Honeywood, spokesman for Western Power Distribution, said: "We do not believe the fault has anything to do with the work on Tesco, which doesn't seem to have any bearing on it."
