London North Eastern Railway has defended the emergency procedures put in place during a power cut at York Station.

Several questions have been issued by Cllr Andy D'Agorne, who attended and helped out at the incident, about whether the station staff were equipped properly with megaphones to direct passengers.

He also asked why the station didn't have a back up power supply to keep the destination boards operational during the outage, on Monday, December 3.

He said: "It seemed to me that from walking past that staff didn’t even have a loud haler to instruct passengers what was going on or where to head towards.

"I was surprised that the station didn't have a back up supply to keep the destination boards operational and were forced to suspend all train journeys meaning hundreds of people arriving back from a day in York, or travelling elsewhere with nowhere to wait.

"It was a nightmare for pedestrians at Blossom Street junction. While the street lights were off there was no means of safety to help people cross the road.

"I was wearing my reflective cycle tabard and helped a blind lady cross the road but it seemed that people were just left with no assistance. People who were not local would have no idea of the junction layouts or where to look out for pedestrian crossings."

However, a spokesman for LNER said that back up generators were not common place in stations across the UK.

In a statement the company said: "It’s not common practice for stations on the UK rail network to have back up power supplies. However, York station does have the provision of emergency lighting to assist in the safe evacuation of customers which is what was carried out on Monday by the station team.

"We do indeed have a few megaphones at the station which we use in times of disruption.

"During the events on Monday, December 3, staff members did utilise these to pass on information to customers.

"As soon as it was clear that power may be off for a considerable amount of time and due to it going dark in the near future, the team proactively decided to close the station and evacuate customers. This was to ensure customer safety and allow for temporary lighting to be arranged. Power was restored before this process was complete."