RESIDENTS of more than 50 houses in a County Durham town suffered intermittentpower cuts for three days.

People in Landsdowne Street, Darlington, were seething after the power failed on Saturday afternoon.

Between then and Tuesday afternoon Northern Electric customers found their electricity was coming on and going off every few hours.

One resident, Tony Cross, said: "It was really awful, you never knew when the power was going to be on or off, and Northern Electric were saying they couldn't find the fault.

"It would come on for a few minutes or a couple of hours and then would be off for hours again."

A Northern Electric spokesman said yesterday: "We have had an intermittent fault on the system which was causing the fuses at the sub-station to blow.

"We found the fault yesterday on the underground system, and we were also able yesterday to switch the customers to an alternative sub-station.

"We worked on the fault yesterday and there was another break last night as the customers were switched back on to their own sub-station.

"Some other party had excavated the area. We believe it may have damaged our cable."