Western Power in the dark over Sidmouth power cut

WESTERN Power are in the dark over the cause of an intermittent six-hour power cut which left a string of High Street Sidmouth shops without electricity last Friday.

WESTERN Power are in the dark over the cause of an intermittent six-hour power cut which left a string of High Street Sidmouth shops without electricity last Friday.

The company said the failure of underground cables in Russell Street was responsible for the outage but it did not know what had caused them to do so.

Shops were left closed just hours before the town's late-night shopping extravaganza.

A Western Power spokesperson said: "It did take a while to locate the fault as it was underground. We were made aware of a problem at 6.50am and until 1.43pm four to five customers were without supply, but not all at the same time."

She added that "extensive excavation" work was carried out over the weekend and hoped there will be no reoccurrence.