UPDATE: Power fault leaves Newbury homes and businesses without electricity

HOMES and businesses across Newbury have been left without electricity for much of today (Tuesday) following a power cut.

A fault on a high voltage line caused the outage affecting a total 1,117 properties this morning with the supply to some homes not expected to be re-instated until 8pm.

Engineers from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) were notified of the problem at around 10.30am and are currently on site carrying out repairs.

SSEN had originally anticipated to have the problem resolved by by 1.30pm.

An SSEN spokesperson said: "Most of the customers are now back on supply. Unfortunately our engineers discovered a cable fault during the fix which has delayed the connection of the remaining 223 customers.

"We are currently arranging for four generators to restore the remaining customers’ supply in the meantime while our engineers work to fix it and we expect the generators will be all in place by 8pm this evening.

"Again, we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused while we work to safely restore the supply."