MORE than 1,500 homes have been hit by power cuts in the county after three separate disruptions were reported in one day.

Homes in and around Cowley, Kidlington and Abingdon have been affected by the power cuts, with some households being left without power since 8am.

The OX14 area including Abingdon had power cut to 1,200 homes for three minutes initially about 8am due to an broken overhead line.

Staff from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSE) are on still on site working to restore power but a company spokesman added: "Around 11 customers are currently off supply following one of our overhead lines that has come down."

Due to the power cut the Europa School UK and the European School in Culham, near Abingdon, have been without heating and water supply in some areas.

Europa School UK headteacher Peter Ashbourne said: "We have asked parents to come in early where possible to pick up children simply because we need to reduce the number of children on the site.

"We have had no electricity since 7am this morning and no heating, although luckily the heating had been on before this.

"Although we have had to move people around the school where heating is not working etc but it is a manageable situation."

Elsewhere in the county, homes in and around Kidlington have been left without power since 9.46am. Initially the power cut affected 249 households and 34 still remaining without power.

An SSE spokesman said: "Around 249 customers were affected by a fault on our high voltage network this morning. We were able to quickly restore the majority of these customers within 20 minutes by carrying out a procedure called ‘switching’ from our control room in Portsmouth.

"We have members of staff on the ground carrying out line patrols to identify the cause and hope to restore the remaining 34 customers as soon as possible."

There were 25 homes in and around Cowley, Oxford, also without power due to emergency repairs being carried out to underground cables.

Areas near Cowley and Abingdon were reconnected by 3pm and in Kidlington it is hoped to have power restored by 7pm.

SSE has apologised to all those affected and any inconvenience caused.