TRADERS in a market town have told of their anger after losing another day's business when their electricity supply went off for the third time in a week.

Most of one side of Yarm High Street lost power yesterday for nearly 11 hours, resulting in shops, restaurants and pubs having to turn away customers and losing thousands of pounds in trade.

The same thing happened last week, with businesses forced to close on Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday when a fault occurred on the underground low voltage network.

That was followed by a secondary, unrelated fault. Power was then restored by a generator while repair work was carried out.

Stephanie Richardson, who owns Strickland and Holt and is a member of Yarm Traders' Association, said: "I would say a quarter of all businesses have been affected. It is annoying as it just keeps happening.

"We have to close up as we have no electricity, but still have to pay staff and rates. It is a complete nightmare."

Restaurants that were left without electricity had to throw out food and cancel bookings.

Marcus Bennett, owner of McCoy's In Yarm, said: "It is happening too often. You would think they would have had it fixed. There is only so long you can keep things in fridges for and so the food just has to go in the bin.

"We have lost thousands of pounds worth, which means we have to start afresh. We were using gas for coffees, but had to close later on."

A spokeswoman from NEDL apologised for the cuts. "A fault had occurred on an underground cable at 8.07am, affecting about 80 customers in Yarm High Street. Engineers restored the supply at 6.50pm following repairs," she said. "We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

She was unable to say whether the cable had been damaged during on-going work to re-lay cobbles in the High Street.