MORE than 2,000 households and businesses in Worcestershire were left without power yesterday morning.

In two separate incidents people in the Ronkswood area of Worcester and Pershore were left without electricity.

In Ronkswood up to 72 houses were left without power after a fuse blew overnight. Enginners from Central Networks located the fault in a cable, but it was buried beneath a resident’s garden. They were forced to dig the area by hand before they could replace it.

Most residents had their electricity restored by about 2.40pm, but six had to wait until 4.15pm.

A spokesman for Central Networks said: “It was a cable running underneath the garden and engineers had to find the section of cable that had been damaged and find the fault that meant the electricity supply had failed.

“Once they had found this they replaced it with a nice fresh bit of cable and the power was then back up and running for everyone.”

In Pershore, 1,704 people were without power due to a fault on the high voltage network. About 181 people were still without electricity before lunchtime, with power restored a few hours later.

But engineers are still trying to find the exact cause of the problem. The spokesman said: “Engineers are looking into the exact cause of the problem. We were able to divert power in the network to get people’s electricity back on so the lights were back working and the heating as well.

“Once that had been done, the engineers could then begin to concentrate on what the problem was and investigate this, which they are still in the process of doing,” he said.