Nurses reportedly took to using torches, people were said to be stranded in lifts and drivers were allegedly left unable to leave barrier controlled car parks when power temporarily went out in parts of Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital last night.

The Northern Echo understands that the power cut happened at around 6.45pm, with a number of people taking to social media to report subsequent issues.

One person thanked hospital staff for working to resolve the problems, saying: “Well done to all the staff who got people out of lifts and got the generators working.

“All the maintenance staff stayed on and didn’t just leave at the end of their shift, it was all hands on deck.”

Northern Powergrid dispatched an engineer to the hospital at around 7.15pm, with the situation said to have been resolved shortly afterwards.

The hospital's director of Estates, IT and procurement, Kevin Oxley, said: “We can confirm that due to an external fault, The James Cook University Hospital had a power interruption last night for around half an hour and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience this will have caused.

“The hospital was powered by back-up generators until the mains power was restored and all critical service areas within the hospital had uninterrupted power supply at all times.

“A decision was made to temporarily divert ambulances from accident and emergency until the situation was resolved which is in line with our business and emergency continuity plans which worked to good effect. One patient was diverted to the University Hospital of North Tees.

“All areas impacted by yesterday’s power cut are back to normal and we’d like to thank our estates team and Carillion who worked hard to ensure full power was restored as quickly and as safely as possible.”