THOUSANDS of homes and businesses lost their electricity supply yesterday because of a fault in overhead power lines.

The power cut hit 3,600 customers in villages near Durham City, including Bowburn, Coxhoe, Croxdale, Shincliffe and Tursdale at 6.15am.

Engineers managed to restored the electricity to 3,200 homes shortly after 8am, but the remaining 400 were not reconnected until 2pm.

A spokesman for power line company NEDL said: "We switched the network around to get the supplies restored. There was a fault and we carried out repairs.

"Investigations are under way as to what caused it. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience that the interruption in supplies may have caused."