More than 17,000 customers of Scottish and Southern Energy – including the whole of Hambledon – were left without electricity last night after a major power failure across the Godalming area.

The outage, on one of the coldest nights of the year, happened just after 6pm when many people would have been preparing evening meals. In some areas such as Hydestile power was not restored until around 10.30pm.

In the past SSE has blamed adverse weather but this was not the cause of last night’s failure and an SSE spokesman admitted on BBC Radio Surrey this morning that the cause was still unknown. He said engineers were on site last night and again today looking for the reason.

He apologised for the disruptiuon which occured despite SSE “investing a lot of money in the network to minimise the risk of power cuts.” BBC listeners expressed their anger that power failed again after the major disruptions of last year.

The SSE spokesman said that the company has been in touch with vulnerable customers to ensure that they were OK.

Hambledon Parish Council has expressed its concern to SSE over power failures in the village and was assured of better communication in the future. However, at the time of writing this, SSE had not responded to emails from this website asking for an explanation and the SSE website offers no information to customers, other than advice on how to buy SSE services.

Did anyone in Hambledon receive a call from SSE? What was your experience when you contacted SSE on its emergency number? Did you get helpful information? Please let the website team know by using the forum or the contact section.

In the meantime, if you or anyone you know, needs back-up phones that do not require electricty to work, wind-up torches and other emergency equipment, please contact Hambledon’s emergency planning co-ordinator Stewart Payne on 07831 393561. Please refer to an earlier news item on this website about emergency planning for further details.