ELECTRICAL engineers from Suffolk have been sent north of the border to lend a hand after strong gales left thousands of customers without power.EDF Energy workers Mark Simpson, Kevin Gattlin and Ian Wilmhurst, from Bury St Edmunds, and Henry Moye, from Stowmarket, travelled to Scotland on Monday afternoon after 70mph winds disrupted New Year celebrations on Sunday.

ELECTRICAL engineers from Suffolk have been sent north of the border to lend a hand after strong gales left thousands of customers without power.

EDF Energy workers Mark Simpson, Kevin Gattlin and Ian Wilmhurst, from Bury St Edmunds, and Henry Moye, from Stowmarket, travelled to Scotland on Monday afternoon after 70mph winds disrupted New Year celebrations on Sunday.

At the peak of the bad weather more than 16,000 people were left without power as Scottish Power worked to repair more than 150 separate faults affecting the electricity network.

The four men from Suffolk are currently near Edinburgh helping with repairs and are part of a larger team from the south-east which has been sent to the north-west of Scotland in North Ayrshire and Lanarkshire.

Pat Brooks, EDF Energy's head of network operations, based in Ipswich, said: “Our first priority is to ensure we restore supplies to our own customers locally.

“However, when we have resources available we are always happy to lend our expertise in situations like this to other network operators. Given the level of the damage in Scotland our staff have been only too willing to help restore power to those worst affected.”