Teams at Northern Powergrid worked into the night across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire after 240,000 customers were hit by power cuts.

The scale of damage in some locations is so extensive that large sections of overhead lines will need to be rebuilt in order to restore supplies.

Rod Gardner, Northern Powergrid’s Major Incident Manager, said: “Intelligence from our helicopter inspections has illustrated the scale of impact on our network. The impact from Storm Arwen has been one of the worst we’ve experienced in the last 20 years.

“Despite this we have restored more than 200,000 customers supplies and our dedicated teams will not stop until all customers are restored, and our network is returned to full strength.

“We are extremely grateful for the support we have received from other UK network companies, who have provided resource as part of the industry’s mutual support arrangements, which exist for extreme events like this.

“Our frontline teams and contractors will work in partnership with engineers from other parts of the UK, we have also organised additional customer service support to bolster our contact centre to help us keep customers updated.

“We continue to work closely with the region’s gas, water and rail network companies to coordinate with their teams and prioritise our work to help minimise the broader impact on the region.”