About 1,700 homes and businesses in Colchester were blacked out for two hours.

A fault in an underground cable knocked out properties from Lexden along Cowdray Avenue, Ipswich Road, and St Andrew's Avenue just after 2pm yesterday.

Engineers managed to re-route power to most homes by 4pm and were working to repair the link last night.

She said: "We would like to apologise for the disruption this caused.

"The customers who took longer to get back on must have lived near to the problem so that had to be fixed before power was restored."

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