A power cut lasting four hours forced several town centre businesses to close last night.

The outage affected 83 homes and commercial premises in the Broadway area between 6.50pm and 11.10pm.

It was caused by a fault on equipment at a substation.

Among those affected were businesses at The Broadway Shopping Centre and the McDonald's drive thru.

Franchisee Ali El Hajj said staff were forced to throw away food and ask customers to leave.

He said: "We had to close the restaurant for the evening. It was disappointing because we had to turn away so many customers but they understood it was not our fault.

"It is unfortunate but this sort of thing should not happen. It should not take so long to fix a power cut.

"Our first update from the power company was after two hours."

Manager at truGym, Ed Thorn, also closed up after the power cut. He said: "We had to close because of health and safety when the lights went out.

"It's a shame because it is a peak time for the gym and we had classes on, but there would be too many trip hazards."

A spokesman for UK Power Networks said: "Our engineers worked as quickly as possible to restore power supplies after a fault on the electricity distribution network.

"We understand how difficult it is to be without power and apologise for any inconvenience caused."