ELECTRICTY engineers from the region are being sent to help protect power supplies in the flood-hit South-east.

Staff and equipment from Northern Powergrid are being sent to the Thames Valley to assist their counterparts at South East Electricity protect the network from rising floodwaters.

A team of 14 members of staff along with 350 metres of flood defences, 400 modern-style sandbags and two heavy goods vehicles are being despatched to Slough.

A major incident has been declared in the Thames Valley, where 800 homes have been flooded in the last week and more heavy rain is forecast over the coming days.

A spokesman for Northern Powergrid said: "During large-scale emergency incidents such as these, network operators offer one another support to help protect supplies and get customers who have lost electricity back on as quickly as possible.

"We were careful when selecting the amount of equipment and number of staff to assist with SSE’s operation to ensure that our day to day activities and commitments were not unduly affected".