A POWER failure cancelled most late night Christmas shopping at Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre, on Friday.

The power cut, which happened at about 6.30pm, affected not only most of the shops in the centre, but almost 3,000 homes in the Hempstead and Gillingham and Rainham areas.

The big stores, such as Sainsbury's and Marks and Spencer were able to stay open for shoppers, as they have emergency generators as a back up, but most of the smaller shops had to close for health and safety reasons.

A spokesman for the centre said: "Most of our smaller shops had to shut because not only did their tills not work, but for health and safety reasons we cannot have shoppers inside.

"The big stores were able to remain open, but our multi-story car park was also effected, and staff on site were able to help shoppers back to their cars.

"People out shopping seemed to understand what had happened and took the situation well.

"Power was eventually restored to the centre at about 8.30pm, but as we shut at 9pm, most of the smaller shops didn't reopen."

It is thought businesses lost thousands of pounds worth of trade during the blackout.

A spokesman for EDF Energy said: "A high voltage fault in and around Hempstead Valley, Gillingham and Rainham led to 2946 customers being off supply from 6.30pm on Friday.

"We would like to apologise to those customers who were inconvenienced by the power interruption."