Staff drafted in to restore power

A large tree was blown down in Kidderminster last week

More than 3,000 homes in the West Midlands are still without electricity three days after 80mph (128km/h) winds lashed England and brought down cables.

Central Networks has now drafted 1,000 extra engineers in from another company to help repair the damaged network.

About 1,400 homes are affected in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, 1,200 in Staffordshire and several hundred in Shropshire, Coventry and Warwickshire.

A spokesman apologised for the delay, saying they are doing all they can.

Up to 200 homes are still affected in the West Midlands.

If customers have been without power for 48 continuous hours they are entitled to £25 compensation with a further £25 for every continuous 12 hours after that, up to a maximum of £200.

Clearly it's very frustrating for our customers who are without power but I can assure them that we're working as hard as possible to get the lights back on A spokesman for Central Networks

Scottish Power, which supplies Shropshire, said it had 500 engineers - including 50 drafted in from Ireland - repairing faults caused by the worst winds to hit England in 17 years.

Central Networks said about 220,000 customers had been without power across the West Midlands region at some point during the storms.

Call handlers received two week's worth of calls in two days.

Jim Lightfoot, director of customer and network operations, said: "We're very aware that some of our customers have been off for the best part of two days now and we can only apologise for that.

"But our engineers worked long into the night again and started first thing in the morning having got thousands of people back on power overnight.

"Clearly it's very frustrating for our customers who are without power but I can assure them that we're working as hard as possible to get the lights back on."