Furious traders claim they have lost thousands of pounds because of power cuts.

Many businesses in Wallingford town centre were blacked-out for two hours on Wednesday afternoon, following a fault in an underground cable.

The power cut - which hit shops, banks and other businesses in St Mary's Street and the Market Place - followed a similar failure the week before. Now traders have called on Southern Electric to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Gareth Astley, proprietor of Astley's Audio store in Wallingford Market Place, said: "It is costing us thousands of pounds in lost takings. I run an electric shop and without electricity I have a problem." He added: "People can't even get cash out of the bank to do any shopping."

Wednesday's power cut was the sixth that year. Mr Astley said: "It is like living in a Third World country. This is not what we expect in Britain on the verge of the 21st century.

"I want to see Southern Electric spend the money on upgrading our supply. The cable is simply past its sell-by date and needs to be replaced."

Chairman of Wallingford Business 2000 Pat Hayward said the power cuts were causing chaos in the busy run-up to Christmas. She said: "It's appalling. It is affecting lots of businesses and many shops have had to close. It is the worse time for this to happen." Ian McWhirter, who owns Bloomers sandwich bar on St Mary's Street, said his business lost 30 to 40 per cent of its takings every time there was a blackout.

He added: "They don't deal with the problem and nobody gives us any information. I am not happy at all.

"We suffer more than most people as we need electricity for our ovens and freezers, and when this happens, everything stops.

"We lose money as we can't cook anything, and people think we are closed."

A spokesman for Southern Electric, Sophie Greenyer, said work to repair the aging cable would start in the New Year. She said: "We apologise to traders but we are working on this and are trying to get it fixed."

She said the problem had been caused by aging cables beneath St Mary's Street being unable to cope with an excessive demand for power.

Although the company had replaced a section of cable the previous week she admitted it had not stopped the problem.

She added: "It may be taking a while, but we will be doing the work to solve it."

Story date: Friday 24 December

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.