POLICE cordoned off a section of a busy Rochford road last night after electricity cables caught light.

Emergency services were called to Ashingdon Road at about 5.45pm after 142 customers lost power.

Officers worked quickly to make the area safe and set up an exclusion zone around the affected telegraph pole.

A large section of road between Roche Avenue, Dalys Road and Somerset Avenue, off Ashingdon Road, was closed.

Firefighters extinguished the blaze, which started at 5.45pm, then engineers from UK Power Networks moved in to fix the fault.