A power cut has hit Brighton seafront and The Lanes this lunchtime, with the pier, arches, traffic signals, car parks and council buildings all affected.
The Brighton and Hove News understands the Kings Road seafront arches had power restored at about 1.15pm – but 45 buildings in the area are still affected – including the pier.
The Brighton Wheel is using its back-up generator to keep turning.
The Sea Life Centre was forced to shut while the power was down.
A spokeswoman for UK Power Networks said: “UK Power Networks engineers are currently working hard to restore power to 45 customers in part of Brighton following a fault on an underground cable.
“Power was interrupted to 440 customers in the King’s Road area at about 12.40pm but was restored to the majority within ten minutes. A further number of customers would have seen a brief interruption of less than a minute while work was being carried out to restore supplies.
“We would like to reassure the remaining customers that we are working as quickly as is safely possible to return their supplies to normal as soon as we can and apologise for any inconvenience.”
Workers from affected businesses are enjoying the sunshine along the beach while the electricity is off.
Waiting for power…and wifi and tea and laptop juice and fun things!
— Linda Boucher (@linda_boucher) July 31, 2014
The council says the Town Hall, Bartholomew House and the Lanes car park were also affected.
The outage put traffic lights along Brighton seafront out of action this lunchtime from the pier to Black Lion Street
But the power there was switched back on at about 1.45pm, about an hour after it first went off.
However, there is still no power to the pedestrian crossings near the pier roundabout and at the seafront end of East Street.
Thank you for your patience while our systems reboot and we get back on our computers and phones. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
— BrightonHoveCouncil (@BrightonHoveCC) July 31, 2014
Some people were trapped in the car park in Black Lion Street for 45 minutes because of the outage.
@BHcitynews still stuck in @BrightonHoveCC carpark. Babies & kids trapped pic.twitter.com/6B2n2EK1X4
— Phil Moor (@philipmoor) July 31, 2014
#Brighton #Traffic update: A power cut has disabled all traffic lights between the #Pier and #BlackLionSt on the #A259.
— B&H Live Traffic (@BHLiveTraffic) July 31, 2014
@BHcitynews power failure on Brighton beachfront nothing working on the pier chip shops etc all affected
— Ken Frost (@ken_frost) July 31, 2014
