Traders count cost of 24-hour blackout

Dozens of properties suffered the black-out last Thursday and Friday, with businesses having to close and some claiming losses running to thousands of pounds.

A director for the building company working on the corner of Sackville Road said this week their drilling was not to blame.

Rumours of an accident have also been dismissed by the energy supplier who say there is "no conclusive evidence" of third party involvement.

Customers received letters from EDF Energy on Wednesday offering compensation.

But that has done little to appease local businessman, some of whom say they were without power for nearly a day.

Malcolm Davies, owner of Sackville Road newsagent TK's, said: "I reckon it cost me about 3,500. We lost 1,000 worth of frozen food and about 2,500 worth of trade - we were in darkness."

The timing of the incident could not have been more inconvenient for Mr Davies - Friday night's large EuroMillions draw was expected to draw additional business but the machine that issues the tickets was without power.

Chris Jackson, of Bexhill Photographic, said he had heard "rumours from people" about the cause of the power failure but "nothing official."

He revealed the lack of electricity, "put us back quite a bit with our printing."

The power cut hit properties along Sackville Road, with some seafront businesses and even the Halifax bank in Devonshire Road was affected.

A company spokesman for Halifax said: "Health and safety is the main issue, so if the branch has no lights - and for various security issues - we cannot let people through the door." He added customers were directed to branches in Hastings and Eastbourne and telephone and online services. Some cheques were accepted at the door.

Michael Stannard, of Cardy Construction Ltd, who are building the multi-million pound luxury apartment development in Sackville Road, said: "If we had hit a cable like that we would have known about it.

"I know for definite we did not cause problems to any of the cables that run through our site. Because it is at an early stage of the project we would really like to work with members of the public and the community to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible and the relationship is good for everyone."

A spokesman for electricity supplier EDF Energy said: "Power was interrupted to 25 customers in the Sackville Road area of Bexhill at 11.40am on Thursday after a fault on an underground cable. EDF Energy Networks engineers worked to restore power to all those affected at 2.30pm. "Unfortunately there was a further interruption at 3.40pm which affected 35 customers.

"Repair work continued throughout the night, restoring supplies to 15 customers at 3am on Friday, a further ten were reconnected at 10am and the last ten were reconnected at 1.05pm once permanent repairs were completed.

"EDF Energy Networks would like to apologise for any inconvenience this caused and our customer relations team has written to those affected to apologise."

They added: "Our investigations on site did not reveal any conclusive evidence that this power interruption was caused by third party damage to one of our cables and as such we are treating this as a fault instead."