A PENSIONER was left without heating and lights after his electricity went off nearly 20 times over two weeks.

Because of the power problems, Hugh Moore, 82, of Fennel Close, Chineham, was unable to get his car out of his electrically-powered garage door - and he got fed-up with having to reset all of the clocks in his house.

"There has been a major fault somewhere and it is a mess," said exasperated Mr Moore.

"The electricity went off again two or three times over last weekend. Once at 10.15pm on Friday, when it didn't come on again until 8.15am on Saturday, and then again on Saturday evening when I had a family reunion. It was chaos."

Mr Moore added that many of his neighbours, some of whom have young children, had experienced the same problems.

He said: "To be fair to Southern Electric, they are helpful when I called to report problems. But I feel that no one can tell me what is going on.

"Every time I speak to someone, they say there is a problem, but no one can explain to me why there are so many cuts in such a short space of time."

Louisa MacKenzie, a spokeswoman for Southern Electric, shed some light on the issue when she said: "The street was affected by a fault in one of our underground cables.

"We responded to the problem as soon as it was reported by residents, but it did take some time to locate.

"The good news is that is has now been found and permanently fixed, which should be the end of the problems.

"We would like to apologise to our customers who have been affected for the inconvenience caused and we thank them for their patience.

"If anybody does experience problems, we would urge them to call us on 08457 708090."

When The Gazette contacted Mr Moore again, he confirmed that the fault had been fixed and Southern Electric had called to apologise.

However, he said: "My major complaint is not the response, but that no one has been able to tell me why it has taken two weeks, and a lot of inconvenience, for them to discover the fault.

"They should be able to do better than that in this day and age."