RESIDENTS were left without electricity for 16 hours following a power cut.

Houses on one side of Wellfields, in Loughton, were without power from 7.30pm until lunchtime the following day, and locals have claimed a "catalogue of errors" by repairmen meant they were cut off for longer than necessary.

Mick McGough, of Wellfields, said: “I was given various excuses throughout the night. They said they couldn't dig up the road because they hadn't enough cones to cover the area. I thought 'what a load of nonsense'. You expect people to comply with the law and have sufficient materials to work with.

“Then they said they couldn't dig it up because of potential noise during the night. A bit of noise? My next door neighbour's got insulin in the fridge and expensive fish in a garden pond that needs oxygenating.

“I've got a fridge full of food and I was without power for 14 hours. It doesn't bode well for all the power cuts we are being told to expect in the coming years with the extra strain on the system.”

Neighbour Sandy Johal said: “It was so frustrating. We work from home so I had no way to work. I remember it happened around 7.30pm because I was watching EastEnders. I thought it'd be back on for 11pm or 12pm that evening, and it did come on a bit, but then it went again. It took 16 hours which is a long time. I was surprised how long it took.”

David Becker had been having his new kitchen fitted, but work had to be put on hold after the cut. He said: “We couldn't work or do anything from 7.30pm. It was all candles and a newspaper after that. We rang them about 8pm and they said it was a fuse and it would be repaired fairly soon. We went to bed early and I was surprised it was still off in the morning.”

Sue Taylor's house alarm automatically activated as its power ran out, leaving it ringing for an hour at 7am.

She said: “We had six neighbours come round to see what was happening. “I had to throw out food from the fridge, and my husband was working and lost all the work on his computer.”

A spokeswoman for electricity company EDF said: “Power has been restored to 37 customers in the Wellfields area of Loughton who were affected by a fault on a high voltage underground electricity cable.

“On Tuesday (September 15) evening, 15 customers were initially affected for about four hours but 22 customers later lost power at 12.55am yesterday.

“Engineers from EDF Energy Networks worked through the night to repair the fault and in the course of this work, isolated supplies to a further 15 customers at 4.30am.

“Our engineers remained on site working to resolve the problem and restored power to all affected customers at 1.30pm on September 16.

“We do understand how inconvenient it can be to have no power and apologise to those affected by this incident.”