CHILDREN at one of East Lancashire’s brand new super schools were sent home follow-ing a complete power cut less than a fortnight after it opened.

Staff at Shuttleworth College, in Burnley Road, Padiham, a state-of-the-art Building Schools for the Future (BSF) site, made the decision to send its 1,050 pupils home yesterday when the electricity supply failed, leaving the entire building in darkness.

The former Gawthorpe High site, which caters for children aged 11 to 16, only opened its doors to pupils 11 days ago on Monday, September 8.

Engineers said the school would be open today as a generator would supply the school with electricity while the fault is fixed. A spokesman for maintenance contractors Vita Lend Lease said: “We think there was some sort of failure in the mains cable linking the sub station to the switch gear in the school.

“We encountered the problem on Tuesday evening after the school had closed and we thought we had rectified it, but when everything powered up the following morning, it went off again and, on our advice, the head took the decision to send the children home for the day.

“The good news is that we hope to get the pupils back in today.

We believe we have isolated the problem and, while we seek to rectify it, we are going to bring in a stand-by generator, which will have sufficient power to supply the school.”

Headteacher Martin Burgess desc-ribed the occurrence as ‘frustrating’, but ‘ just one of those things’.

He said: “We had a problem with the power, which isn’t unusual for new buildings.

“If you move into a new house, there are always little problems that you have to deal with and this is exactly the same.”

Work began on the new school in August 2006 and was completed at the beginning of this month.

County Coun Jennifer Mein, cabinet member for children and young people, added: “Our aim is to ensure that children can return to school today.”

It is the second time in less than a month that a super school has suffered due to problems with construction work.

Pendle Vale College decided to delay its opening by one week after contractors failed to meet their deadline.