A power cut on Portland Street has affected a number of businesses operating in the city centre this morning.
Electricity North West are currently onsite after it was reported a 'third party' caused damage to an underground electricity cable.
The electricity supplier said 26 properties had been affected by the outage, which was first reported just before 8.30am this morning (February 1).
The outage has affected businesses situated at the building opposite the McDonald's on Oxford Road, which houses a number of digital agencies and cafes.
SEO agency Embryo, based on the second floor of 127 Portland Street, was one of the businesses to be affected by the cut.
The agency's managing director said they had been told the cut was due to a builder cutting through a cable nearby.
Ross Green, MD of Embryo, said: "A fair few of our staff arrived for work at around 8:30am only to find that all the power had gone and, as a digital marketing agency, we rely on electricity to get us through the day.
"We've been told that our building isn't the only one affected because a builder had cut through a cable further up the street, causing the power to go out in quite a few buildings."
Embyro is based within a building owned by Bruntwood, who have been able to assist with a contingency plan for the agency's staff.
Ross added: "Thankfully, Bruntwood managed to secure a space in Piccadilly for our staff that did arrive from outside of Manchester, those who live in the city centre have been asked to work from home.
“It's great that Bruntwood has been so flexible and adaptable at such short notice.
"We're hoping this gets resolved soon, as we rely on being in our own office space for client meetings and internal catch-ups."
Jen Cahill at Phillpotts said she was also informed by onsite workers that someone had hit an electric cable, which caused the power cut.
The café business opened at 7am and was able to open for just over an hour before the outage shut service down.
“I’ve just spent hours driving round to the other stores to drop off the stock from the freezers and fridges because we didn’t know when we would be getting power again,” Jen explained.
“Luckily, we were able to cook our corporate business lunches before the power went off but we’ve had to turn away the walk-in customers.
“We’ve lost a lot of trade. It’s been an eventful day but hopefully we’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”
Jen said the power returned shortly before 12.30pm but it was too late to open back up again today.
“I’ve literally just got back and the power is back so now I’ve got to go back and pick up all my stock again,” she added.
“We’re only open until 3pm today so obviously, because the electricity has just come back on and we’ve got no stock, we won’t be able to open back up today.”
On its website, Electricity North West said the power cut ‘had been caused by an unexpected incident with the underground cable that provides electricity’.
It said onsite inspectors were currently investigating the issue.
It said postcodes affected included M1 6DW, M1 6DN, M1 6HY, M1 6DF, M1 6HR, M1 6FB, M1 4PZ, M1 2HY, M1 3LD, M1 4PY, M1 6EQ, M1 6WA, M1 6EG.
A spokesperson for Electricity North West said: “We received reports of a power cut this morning in Manchester at 8.30am affecting 26 properties after a third party damaged an underground electricity cable.
“We responded immediately and our teams of engineers are now on site carrying out the necessary repair work and aim to restore power to those affected as quickly and as safely as possible.”
