THE energy company responsible for supplying Cowley Road has said work will be finished by the end of the week on a fault causing persistent power cuts.

Businesses on a stretch of the East Oxford street have lost thousands of pounds in trade since the power outages started about a year ago.

The most recent power cuts happened on Friday at about 6pm and then again throughout Saturday, causing several restaurants to close.

Liam Wain, manager of restaurant Atomic Burger, said: “All the appliances went off on Friday and it nearly caused a fire because the extractor fan in the kitchen stopped working.”

A spokesperson from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) confirmed work began yesterday on fixing the problem.

He said: “SSEN is aware of an ongoing issue affecting customers in and around the Cowley Road area of Oxford and would like to apologise to its customers for the inconvenience they have experienced.

"A fault in Alma Place was identified as being responsible for some of the interruptions to customers’ power supply and work was undertaken to replace five metres of underground cable to alleviate this issue.

Continued investigations by SSEN engineers identified a further issue within the local underground electricity network, with work having commenced today to address this through balancing the power supply across three local substations; this work will be completed by the end of this week."

The company added all customers entitled to compensation would be contacted.