Hundreds of homes have suffered power cuts in Shenley this week - just months after another fault was fixed.

Villagers reported black outs on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday - as well as another failure two weeks ago.

The village was hit by a series of power cuts in February and March this year - following years of an unreliable power supply.

Mark Van Twest, of Newcombe Road, said: "Whatever they say about the power failure, there is a lot being hidden. This has been going on for years and this past month has been horrible.

"I have an elderly neighbour who hasn't had a hot meal all day - and the fridges are up the creek too.

"I've been here for 12 years and it's been going on for at least seven or eight years. It's chaotic."

A spokeswoman for EDF Energy Networks apologised for the power cuts.

She said: "The earlier interruptions were caused by an intermittent fault on the network which proved particularly difficult to locate. Considerable work was completed to trace the fault which has since been repaired.

"Regrettably there have been further interruptions this month, the most recent occurred at 7.20am on Wednesday, affecting 900 customers. Power was restored to 500 customers within a minute and final supplies were restored by 10.36am."

She said engineers were able to trace the cause for the recent cuts to a piece of equipment in the main substation and this is being repaired as a matter of urgency'.

She added: "A team of engineers will inspect other equipment on this section of the network to ensure it is all functioning normally."