Cumbrian clock company to turn back Big Ben

A Cumbrian company will travel across the country to make sure the UK's most famous clock keeps time.

Clocks will be turned back by one hour on Sunday, as the country changes from British Summer Time (BST) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

The Cumbria Clock Company previously spent four years restoring Big Ben, the timepiece on Queen Elizabeth Tower in Westminster.

The team will oversee the time change, with the owner describing it as "quite the procedure".

• When do the clocks go back?

The company was entrusted to entirely strip out the timepiece as part of the tower's £80m refurbishment in 2017.

It involved cleaning, repairing and restoring more than 1,000 components, including wheels, pinions, bell-hammers and bearings, at its workshop in the village of Dacre, near Penrith.

Keith Scobie-Youngs, the company's director and co-founder, said the time change would take all night.

Mr Scobie-Youngs said a member of the team would start work on the clock at 18:00 BST on Saturday evening.

Working with a Westminster-based team, the lights will be turned off and the hands moved up to the 12 o'clock position.

They will then use the downtime to do some servicing on the mechanics.

"Then at one o'clock - when we know it's bang on the hour - we switch the dial lights back on," Mr Scobie-Youngs said.

He said they used GPS technology to ensure the clock is restarted at exactly the right time.

"The clock is 160-odd years old, but it's still an incredible piece of kit, capable of absolute excellent time keeping."

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