Hundreds of homes have been left without power following a reported wire theft in east London.
Around 400 homes in the Walthamstow area have been left without power, including properties on Maynard Road and Barclay Road.
The incident was first reported at 5.30pm on Thursday, but has persisted into Friday afternoon, with the repair potentially requiring the road to be dug up.
UKPN said the outage has been caused by vandalism to the electricity network, triggering a “neutral fault” which could cause dangerous “voltage fluctuations.”
It added that it expects 280 homes to be reconnected by the end of the day.
Waltham Forest council said in a statement that it was “providing a range of support to those in the area and protecting the most vulnerable residents affected by the power cut.”
So far, measures have included overnight door-knocking for affected residents, power banks, and torches.
UKPN has provided customer support vehicles on Barclay Road and Shernhall Street for food, water, WiFi, and power provisions.
Wires and cables have been the target of theft for a number of years, due to the high value of copper, sold for its scrap metal value.
Even as big cities like London switch from copper to newer technologies, interruptions due to cable theft have cost the UK economy more than £4.3 billion in the past decade, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Metal, Stone, and Heritage Crime.
Electricity, train networks, and telecommunications networks all rely on copper, though electricity distributor UKPN has been transitioning to aluminium networks for larger-scale infrastructure.
Aluminum wires are stolen on occasion, but fetch a far smaller sum than their copper counterparts.
In the UK, the “Copper Switch-Off” will see most telecoms operators retire from copper to full-fibre by January 2027, including BT and Openreach.
Cable thefts commonly occur at train stations. Network Rail reported 69,275 minutes of train delays in 2024 due to cable theft.
