Electricity North West spends £16m on storm resilience

Electricity North West said it wanted to be able to cope better with future power cuts

A power company has spent £16m in a bid to make Cumbria's electricity supply more resilient after thousands were left cut off for days last year.

Storm Arwen left 93,000 homes without power in the North West, many of them in Cumbria, when it hit on 26 November.

Electricity North West said it wanted to limit future, prolonged outages by replacing old power line poles.

It has also removed overhanging trees to make repairs easier and invested in a new automated control system.

Storm Arwen left 93,000 homes without power across the North West

Power companies had been told to improve their storm response after Storm Arwen, which left more than one million homes without power, a report by the energy regulator Ofgem said.

The storm brought severe wind, rain and snow across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Three people died as gusts of up to 100mph lashed the UK.

Ofgem boss Jonathan Brearley told power firms to "up your game" and "get ready for winter".

Jonathan Eggleston, Electricity North West's area operations manager for Cumbria, said: "The new automated system will start kicking back on supplies that have gone off, as fast as the technology will allow it to do so."

Storm Arwen felled trees such as this one at Wray Castle in the Lake District