HUNDREDS of homes in a rural part of mid Suffolk were left without power for up to 17 hours yesterday after a tree damaged overhead cables.

Elliot Furniss

HUNDREDS of homes in a rural part of mid Suffolk were left without power for up to 17 hours yesterday after a tree damaged overhead cables.

More than 460 homes and businesses in and around the villages of Thwaite and Wetheringsett were hit by the blackout, which began at just after 10.30pm on Sunday night.

EDF Energy, which runs the electrical network in the region, apologised for any inconvenience the loss of power may have caused to customers.

Although all properties were receiving power again by just after 3pm, many people had been left frustrated by the events and remained in the dark about what had caused the problem.

At about 1pm, Dawn Abel, landlady of the Bucks Head pub in Thwaite, said she had been unable to open up for the lunch service, losing out on valuable custom.

She said: “Our phone is not working either and I'm getting a bit concerned about my freezers. It's getting quite worrying now, 13 hours on.

“I normally do very well on Monday lunchtimes - sometimes 15 to 20 covers. My husband has gone off to play golf because there's nothing we can do and I'm just doing some gardening and cleaning. We can't even have a shower because the shower has no power.”

A spokesman for EDF Energy said engineers had worked through the night to restore power to the 464 affected customers in stages, with the final 150 homes and businesses up and running again by 3.09pm.

She said “Tree cutting work continued this morning. We appreciate how difficult it can be to lose power and would like to apologise to customers for the inconvenience caused by this incident.”