Aluminium roof sheeting was torn from the south west corner of the £25m Langtree Park stadium as winds of up to 97mph battered the UK causing millions of pounds of damage.

Barr will wait for the winds to die down before workers examine the damaged sections.

A St Helens spokesman said: “We’ve got to wait for the contractors who built the stadium to come and inspect it before we can make a formal assessment of the damage. As a precaution the club has cordoned off the affected area.”

Barr is still working on the fit-out of the stadium’s interior.

High winds also damaged Epsom’s Duchess Stand stadium roof (above) which was completed three years ago by Willmott Dixon at a cost of £38m.

JSC Sport, which represents the racecourse, confirmed that a full investigation into what went wrong will begin today when contractors are due to start work to make the roof safe.

“We’ll have more details then”, said a spokesman. “Hopefully everything will be open again by the end of the week.

“Only 5% of the roof is damaged, it’s just the insulation has blown about which makes it look worse than it is.”