The cause of a major power cut that shut off electricity to thousands of homes and businesses in the Great Yarmouth area on Monday was a fault on an underground cable.

The cause of a major power cut that shut off electricity to thousands of homes and businesses in the Great Yarmouth area on Monday was a fault on an underground cable.

EDF confirmed the cause of the blackout and said its engineers are working out how to repair the high voltage cable in Yarmouth while supplies have been switched to a different system.

Monday's power cut happened at 12.04pm.

Thousands of people lost their electricity for two and a half hours as engineers located the fault and set up a replacement system.

During the black out shops, banks and Market Place chip stalls had to close and visitors to the town hall were turned away.

Yarmouth's Sealife Centre had to close its tanks and aquariums to the public while an emergency back up system kicked in.

EDP spokeswoman Tracey Sparling said: “The cause of yesterday's power interruption has been established to be a fault which developed on a high voltage underground cable in the Yarmouth area.

“A repair project is currently being planned and this should not affect power supplies to our customers in the area.

“We would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused yesterday.”