ANGRY business owners are counting the cost of power cuts that left them thousands of pounds out of pocket.

Most of one side of Yarm High Street was blacked out, forcing pubs, restaurants and shops to close.

Customers had to be turned away and stocks of food and drink were lost during the crisis, on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

Black Bull pub manager Mark Eddy said: "We had to close on Tuesday night and all day Wednesday. All the computerised tills were affected and it took us a week to get them working again. It was a nightmare."

Italian restaurant Santoro was forced to shut on Tuesday, but managed to open on Wednesday evening with the use of candlelight.

Head supervisor Ross Serino said: "We had a couple of big parties of ten people booked in on the Tuesday and must have lost about £2,000 to £3,000 on the night.

"We had customers who had paid deposits on the Wednesday, so we had to get the candles out. But we still had to turn away people who had not booked. Luckily the kitchen uses gas for cooking but everything else was off, including the tills. We also lost a lot of lager and food stock from fridges."

Tim Williams, bar manager at Hide Bar and Grill, was critical of the NEDL engineers who were called out to repair the fault.

He said: "They were working right outside where we are and I kept going out and asking them what was happening. They weren't much help and kept saying it would be back on in half an hour, but three hours later it was still off."

He added: "We had to close on both days. Tuesday is a busy night for us and Wednesday is usually good for food. I reckon it cost us a good £6,000."

Other businesses hit by the cuts included McCoys in Yarm, Prima Donna, the Green Tree, the Ketton Ox and the Spar.

A spokeswoman for NEDL said businesses were not eligible for compensation because the fault was not continuous for at least 18 hours.

She said: "The fault on Tuesday was on the underground low voltage network, which was followed by a secondary, unrelated fault. Power was restored by a generator while permanent repair work continued."

She added: "Obviously we would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

The spokeswoman said NEDL was unable to confirm the cause of the fault or comment on speculation that an underground cable had been damaged during ongoing work to re-lay cobbles in the High Street.