MORE than 40 homes in York were left without electricity for almost ten hours while a fault was fixed.

People living in Feversham Crescent, off Wigginton Road, had their electricity supply cut off on Sunday because of a problem with an underground cable.

Residents were warned that they would be left without power from 10am until 5pm, but they were not reconnected until 8pm.

Temporary traffic lights were set up in Wigginton Road while the work was carried out, leading to huge queues of traffic.

A spokeswoman for suppliers Northern Electric Distribution Limited said: "An underground cable fault caused an unexpected interruption to customers in the area a couple of weeks ago.

"A temporary repair was done at the time to reduce the inconvenience to residents, and we notified them in advance that we planned to carry out the repair itself on Sunday.

"Unfortunately it then emerged that the gas and cable companies had put their services on top of our cables which delayed the whole process.

"We can only apologise for that. The fault has now been fixed and there will be no further interruption."

Updated: 10:29 Tuesday, May 16, 2006