700 Church Stretton businesses and homes left without power

About 700 homes and businesses in a Shropshire town were left without power for up to several hours yesterday after reports of a main supply cable being cut through.

Engineers for Western Power were due in Church Stretton today to find out what caused the power failure at about 9.30am.

Most properties were reconnected within a short space of time.

Butt some in the Sandford Avenue area were left without power for up to 12 hours, according to one resident.

Carl Jones, who is based in Sandford Avenue, wrote on social networking site Twitter yesterday: "Still no electricity on our side of Sandford Avenue in Church Stretton.

"At 9.30am the electricity people said that it's be off for 20 minutes, it was a fuse. Now it turns out it was a 'cut cable'.

"Now we've been told no electricity until 9pm at the earliest."

A spokeswoman for the Longmynd Service Station, said: "We were thankfully not affected, but a lot of the town was, some for a while I believe.

"Some businesses were without power for a long time and this affected customers."

Today, no one was available from Western Power to comment.