With work now starting on the larger of the two cottages, we simply can’t turn the electricity off as we did in the other cottage. Otherwise, we would have now electricity on site at all. The solution is to fix a single temporary socket in each of the cottages. The socket is right next to the meter so that there is no danger that you can accidentally cut through the cable as it is only 20cms long. This will provide us with the opportunity to power lights, kettles, or the occasional cement mixer.
This is definitely a job for a qualified electrician and we were lucky enough to find someone locally that was available same day! It only took an hour or so! Thank you Dave!