Engineers start emergency drilling at 2am in Westcliff street

Several streets in Westcliff suffered a power cut in the early evening yesterday.

However, UK Power Networks workers arrived at Southbourne Grove, Westcliff, to carry out the repairs in the early hours of the morning, which consisted of piercing drilling to the concrete.

More than 50 homes in the area were affected, and information on the electric company's website revealed 38 customer calls had been received.

The unbearable noise lasted for around two hours and resulted in a number of car alarms being triggered, which also sounded out for a significant amount of time.

Just when residents thought the disturbance couldn't get any worse, one of the UK Power Networks' engineers, who was operating a digger, could be heard swearing and shouting at what appeared to be directed at one of his colleagues.

Lizzie Winter, 28, a resident who lives in a property where the engineers were working directly outside, said: "I was woken up about two this morning to the sound of drilling, it was so loud and unnecessary for that time of the morning - my windows were shaking.

"It was right outside my bedroom window as well. The workers were being loud, shouting and swearing.

"Other neighbours were out there complaining as well. I don’t think I got back to sleep until about 4.30am when they finally stopped."

• VIDEO: UK Power Network engineer caught swearing on Westcliff job

Another angry resident, added: "I couldn't believe what I was waking up to at 2am and when I went out there to see what was going on, the engineers didn't even once apologise just said 'It's part of our job it's just what we have to deal with with'.

"I couldn't believe the audacity of it to tell me that's what they had to deal with when I had to listen to awful drilling for two hours in the middle of the night and have my child woken up by it when we both had to be up for work and school in a few hours.

"Then to my disbelief, around five minutes after going back inside I could hear one of the workmen shouting and swearing so loudly and aggressively, at his colleague I think.

"So when I went back out there to confront them and spoke to what I was told was the manager of the site, he had a huge grin on his face to which I told him I didn't think it was funny!

"The drilling went on for hours keeping us up for most of the night."

UK Power Networks engineers working at 2am

A spokesman for UK Power Networks, said: 

"Our priority is to provide safe and reliable electricity supplies, so we work 24 hours a day to restore power for local residents if a power cut happens.

"Engineers were working until 4.15am today to restore power to 55 properties after a fault developed on an underground cable last night.

"We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this essential work."