BUSINESSES were thrown into darkness on the busiest shopping period of the year.
Shops in Rayleigh High Street, near to the junction with Eastwood Road, suffered a power cut late in the afternoon last Friday.

The electric was still off on Saturday, some shops had managed to get their lights on but had no tills or other electricals working.

This left traders with no option but to take cash and only allowed a handful of people into the shop at any time - escorted by staff.

Power was still off on Christmas Eve as engineers worked to fix the fault.

Chris Black, Rochford District councillor, popped in to do some shopping on Saturday and wrote about his experience on blog www.onlinefocus.org.

He said: “To buy some shaving cream in Boots I had to be escorted by a staff member to the shelf, and he had to write down the amount and the bar code. I had to pay in cash.

“It has had a devastating effect for some people.”

A spokeswoman for UK Power Networks said about 30 customers had been affected in the latest incident.

She said: “UK Power Networks would like to apologise to some customers in the High Street area of Rayleigh who have recently experienced interruptions to their power supply, or partial supply.

“In the latest incident about 30 customers are estimated to have been without power since 9.38am on Christmas Eve, and a smaller group of properties were affected for periods throughout the weekend.

“Our engineers are on site, working to restore power supplies as quickly as is safely possible and get to the root of the problem – which is believed to be an intermittent underground cable fault which is proving difficult to pinpoint and repair.”