POWER has been restored to all 20,000 homes affected by outages caused by freezing conditions yesterday.

Several thousand homes in West Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse were without power because of snow, with Scottish and Southern Energy Networks (SSEN) confirming 12 postcodes in the OX18 area area and more near Shrivenham were affected as well as dozens more in nearby Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

SSEN said snow, combined with high winds and lightning, has caused damage to SSEN’s overhead network resulting in a number of faults across its region.

Craig Gilroy, Director of Customer Operations, said: “We understand how frustrating a loss of power can be, especially over the festive season, and I would like to thank our customers for their patience as our teams battled throughout the day and into the night to restore power."

He also thanked front line staff for their dedication and hard work and added with high winds forecast for later in the week, they would continue to closely monitor the situation so they would be well prepared "to respond to whatever further challenges the British winter has in store for us.”