A MAJOR outage has left hundreds of homes without gas since last night after the mains were turned off due to a fault.

Homes in the King Edward Way area of Witham will be without gas until the fault can be fixed.

Cadent Gas switched off the mains and sent about 30 engineers to the site who worked on the problem until 10.30pm.

A spokesman for Cadent Gas said: “We were made aware that a number of properties around the estate off King Edward Road and Allectus Way were without gas.  We believe the whole estate may be affected. 

“Engineers were immediately mobilised to go to site and investigate the matter further.

For news updates straight to your inbox, sign up to our newsletter here.

"Last night, around 30 of our team attended the incident and began working to resolve the matter, as well as visiting around a third of the affected properties.

“Work ended for the night at around 10.30pm when we took the decision that residents would not want to answer their door past this time.

“We will be sending more of our engineers on to site today and work will begin from around 8am."

The company said engineers would be attending the scene again today, April 14, to further assess the situation.

The spokesman added: “Once this is complete, we can start to restore gas to the network and then we can begin to restore gas to each property.

"We urge residents not to attempt to turn their gas back on themselves, our engineers need to do this safely for them."

For more information on the incident visit cadentgas.com/witham.