ELECTRICITY supplies to an Exmoor village are to be upgraded in a bid to reduce the number of power cuts suffered by residents.

A low voltage electricity line serving Wootton Courtenay will be refurbished by National Grid in a project starting on Thursday (June 5).

But, it will mean some short power cuts in the village while the work is carried out and a series of road closures, made worse because Openreach will also be working in the area on some days.

National Grid technician Adam Shepherd said: “This is to improve the reliability and capacity of the lines and hopefully reduce the amount of interruptions to customers’ supplies caused during bad weather.

“The initial closure is scheduled for eight weeks, but hopefully we will be done sooner than this.

“This is an over-estimation to allow for unexpected hard ground which may delay excavation.

“However, we cannot guarantee it will not take the full eight weeks.”

Mr Shepherd said the first road closures would allow National Grid to use excavators and a lorry to erect all the poles and stay supports, the wires which go from pole top down to a galvanised rod into the ground to support it.

He said: “We will then return from September 1 to 12 to carry out the pole changes, replacement of existing wires with new bundled insulated conductor, BT wire transfer, and, finally, removal of all poles.

“The intention is to avoid having to come back and cause further disruption with more road closures and old poles being left for months after.

“All new poles are erected next to existing ones by our poling team, SJS Southwest.

“No poles will be erected without speaking to the landowner and arranging access first.

“We cannot move poles into new locations, as that has a knock-on effect on pole positions further on.

“Any accidental damage caused while carrying out works will be put right by National Grid at no cost to the customer.”

Mr Shepherd said National Grid would need to occupy the road space of five highways, All Saints’ Church to Brockwell Lane, New Road, Brockwell Lane, Ranscombe Road, and Fairgarden Road.

He said: “During the pole works we will only be working on one road at a time, and at no point during the whole project will we occupy all five roads at once.”

Access would be maintained for residents, who were being asked to try to work with National Grid to minimise the amount the contractors had to move and speed up the process for the company to be able to leave as quickly as possible.

Access would be allowed for rubbish and recycling collections and for deliveries, and any power outages would be confirmed in advance to residents by letter.

Mr Shepherd said National Grid would provide generators for customers with medical issues who were affected by power outages, but not for businesses.

Last December, thousands of residents across West Somerset lost power supplies as Storm Darragh swept across the area, some of them for several days.