STORM Aileen and an underground cable fault caused power cuts this morning affecting hundreds of homes in Leigh.

Overhead lines were damaged by severe gales, leading to 884 homes in the Guest Street area losing power at around 5.55am.

Power was restored at 792 of the homes within a minute with the other 92 suffering from a blackout until 7.35am.

At that time a second fault in the Red Poll Avenue area affected around 70 homes.

The power cut stemmed from an underground cable being damaged.

Electricity North West says engineers managed to restore power for all affected properties seven minutes later.

It added that engineers worked through the night to restore power to its 1,067 customers affected by the storm.

The region’s power network operator has restored supplies following a Met Office amber weather warning for severe gales of 65 to 75mph and a yellow warning for rain in the north west.

Engineers will continue to work throughout the morning to restore power to the remaining 256 customers without power in Leigh, Buxton and Macclesfield.

Mark Williamson, operations director for Electricity North West, said: “We were well prepared for Storm Aileen and I am happy to report that we have now restored power to the majority of customers affected throughout the night and we are operating as business as usual.

“We will continue to monitor the weather and our engineers are working to restore power to any customers who remain without power, but thankfully the winds seem to be reducing and we are confident of restoring all supplies today.”