Thousands left without power

Power will not be fully restored until Sunday

Thousands of people in Staffordshire, who will be without power until Sunday following a fire at an electricity substation, will be able to claim compensation.

The fire happened at 2300 BST on Thursday in Chase Terrace, Burntwood.

It initially affected 45,000 people and by Friday morning 18,000 people were still without power.

Electricity company Aquila apologised for the disruption and said residents affected would have to write to them to claim compensation.

Cause unknown

Liam Herbert, communications manager for Aquila, said engineers had worked through the night to try and restore the problem.

"We have a team of engineers at the station but also dispatched teams to other areas so we could switch supplies."

Mr Herbert said the cause of the fire was unknown.

"We have our major incident team looking into the problem but our priority is to restore power before we look into cause."