ALMOST 2,000 homes and businesses have been affected by a power cut in Poole this afternoon. 

The outage which happened at 1.04pm has affected 1,965 SSE customers. 

One patient at Poole Hospital said the hospital had switched to generators while the power was being disrupted. 

Poole Hospital said: “Poole Hospital has experienced an electrical outage ‘blip’ in line with other areas in the vicinity.

"As a consequence we have taken the decision to revert to our back-up generator to ensure the continued smooth running of services whilst we resolve this matter. We expect to be back to mains electricity shortly.”

SSE said that a fault had occurred on the system.

A spokesperson said: "Engineers are on site and working to identify the cause of the fault and restore power safely. They have reconnected 1,821 customers so far and are working on the remaining 144."