Planned power outages at hospital delayed

Manx Care said the power cuts will be managed as a "critical incident"

Planned power outages at the Isle of Man's main hospital have been delayed after engineers were fogged out.

The first in a series of power outages over three nights for system upgrades, due to take place on Monday, will now go ahead later, Manx Care said.

A mobile CT scanner will be in operation to support the Noble's Hospital accident and emergency department while the power is off.

The outages are needed as part of the ongoing work to upgrade the hospital's electrical infrastructure.

Executive director of health services Oliver Radford said the works would "ensure resilient and reliable distribution of power throughout the hospital for a further two decades and more".

Disruption

The first of the outages, which are expected to last up to four hours, has been scheduled to begin at 21:00 BST, with additional switch-offs on 27 June and 1 July.

Service areas affected will experience a complete loss of mains electricity, with temporary lighting and essential equipment powered by external generators.

Manx Care said the cuts would be managed as a "critical incident" with a full incident command team in place to ensure any issues could be responded to and disruption to patient care is kept to a minimum.

Acknowledging the work would be "disruptive", Mr Radford said it would reduce the "risk of power failure in the future which could more seriously affect service delivery".