Updated 12:25 Friday 12th December 2003
Power Restored

Power has been restored to Hertford Town Centre after shops, restaurants and offices were without electricity for most of Thursday.

The power outage followed a fire in a sub-station ten feet beneath Castle Hall, which affected large parts of the town centre. Worst affected were Maidenhead Street and Parliament Square, where pubs and restaurants were forced to close on what would otherwise have been a busy Thursday evening. Parts of Fore Street and The Wash were also in darkness.

The outage started early on Thursday morning, with many workers and shop staff arriving to find cold and dark premises. Many decided to stay closed, whilst others struggled on in candlelight. Some had backup generators. Waitrose in Bircherley Green were forced to removed all chilled food from display.

Parts of the town had their power restored during the morning, with more at lunchtime, but by 7:30pm many were still without power, whilst teams of engineers toured the town and worked by arclight in Market Place.

They have also confirmed that a short outage on Wednesday evening around 8pm might be connected to Thursday's incident.