THE foot-and-mouth outbreak caused delays for electricity engineers trying to restore supplies to the Heighington and Redworth areas last night.

Northern Electric said 250 premises were affected, including a hotel and a pub, at 4.32pm.

Engineers trying to repair the fault came across land covered by a Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) notice explaining foot-and-mouth restrictions.

A company spokesman said the engineers were delayed for an hour as they tried to find out who owned the land on which they needed to work. The engineers later found they did not need to enter the affected site.

The spokesman said: "We have had problems generally with the MAFF restrictions, because we have not been able to go on to land as we normally would do."

By mid-evening 173 premises were still without power, but Northern Electric was bringing in an emergency mobile generator.