AN error by contractors caused long delays for motorists in Darlington on Wednesday morning as a set of traffic lights was switched on by mistake.

Engineers working for Northern Powergrid set up temporary traffic lights on North Road at 7am - despite the lights not supposed to be operational at the site until 7pm.

This caused major tailbacks on the main route into Darlington town centre during rush hour.

In addition, the same utility company set up temporary traffic lights at the Eastmount Road junction of Haughton Road to carry out emergency repair work to an electricity cable.

Again, this had a major impact on traffic flow into the town.

The works involved dealing with a major electricity cable that had failed in the area meaning that Northern Powergrid had to act quickly and were unable to give Darlington Borough Council advance warning of the temporary lights.

The fault meant around 1,700 homes in the DL7 area were left without power for more than an hour. 

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Northern Powergrid confirmed on Wednesday evening that temporary traffic lights were still in place on Eastmount Road at the junction of Haughton Road while emergency works were carried out to repair the underground cable fault. 

The company said the emergency repair teams would work through the night to complete the work on Eastmount Road and reinstate the road so traffic management is removed before Thursday morning's rush hour. 

A spokeswoman added: "We also have planned maintenance work on North Road which was due to start at 7pm on Wednesday. Unfortunately when the traffic lights were delivered this morning ready for the work they were set up and switched on in error - we’re very sorry for the mistake and the delays this has caused for motorists.

"In view of the emergency work on Eastmount and the mistakes made by our contractors this morning we have delayed the planned work until at the earliest tomorrow night. 

“The work on North Road will take two nights with manned traffic lights in place from 7pm until midnight on each night. Again we apologise for the delays to motorists for both sets of road works, we will do everything possible to minimise further disruption.”