A series of planned power outages will take place at Noble’s Hospital over the next week as part of a managed ‘critical incident’.

The first power outage will take place on Monday evening with two more taking place on Thursday and the following Monday. On each occasion the outages will take place from 9pm to 1am the following day.

The outages are part of Manx Care’s ongoing programme of work to upgrade the electrical infrastructure at Noble’s Hospital.

During these planned outages, the affected service areas will experience a complete loss of mains power with power for temporary lighting and essential equipment coming from external generators.

A mobile CT scanner is also being hired to ensure the imaging service that supports the Emergency Department can be continued while the power is off.

Oliver Radford, executive director of health services, said: “We thank patients and visitors for their patience and understanding during the forthcoming works to upgrade Noble’s Hospital’s electrical infrastructure.

‘While disruptive, the upgrades will ensure resilient and reliable distribution of power throughout the hospital for a further two decades and more, thereby reducing risk of power failure in the future which could more seriously affect service delivery”.

Planning for these outages have been ongoing for several months and contingency plans have been developed to ensure service delivery is not disrupted and patient safety is protected throughout.

The power outages will be managed as a ‘Critical Incident’ with a full incident command team in place throughout the power outages to ensure it can respond to any issues and keep disruption to an absolute minimum.

Visitors to the hospital during one of the power outage periods will see an increase in the numbers of engineers present. There may also be additional trip hazards due to temporary cabling and lighting within the affected wards and corridors.