It's business as usual at City College Norwich after power cuts in the Ipswich Road area forced the closure of its campus on Monday.

The college's main campus had to be closed yesterday after losing power and having no back-up generators to keep it running.

The area surrounding the Ipswich Road campus, including Cecil Road and Trafford Road, lost power around 8.50am on Monday morning.

It led to the cancellation of day and night classes at City College Norwich (CCN) yesterday and principal Dick Palmer admits it is a situation that he needs to ensure doesn't happen again.

He said: 'Our main campus is a very large site and the college is a high voltage user.

'Unfortunately we do not have the capacity to provide back-up power in the event of problems for our suppliers as we have had.

'We will be talking to our power supplier to look at how our scheme is set up and where the measures can be put in place to prevent a similar loss of power to the site in the future.'

More than 1,300 buildings in the area were initially without electricity for about an hour but around 10am that number had been reduced to 288 without power.

The problems did not effect CCN's St Andrews House campus in the city centre, where the majority of its business courses are taught, but the college's external phones and website were out of action.

A spokesman for UK Power Networks said: 'I can confirm we are arranging alternative power supplies for one remaining customer to enable us to restore their electricity supply.

'We always encourage businesses which rely on electricity, to have back-up supplies for occasional interruptions such as this.'

The effects of the electricity problems were felt throughout the NR1 and NR2 postal areas, with a short power cut in central Norwich including the EDP and Evening News offices on Rouen Road.

It is thought that the cut was caused by engineers working on an underground cable to try to restore power.

When the news was broken on the Evening News website – www.eveningnews24.co.uk – yesterday morning the same spokesman had said: 'Electricity supplies were interrupted at about 8.50am to 1,350 customers in roads including Ipswich Road, Cecil Road, Victoria Street, Regina Road and Trafford Road. We would like to reassure customers we are working to restore their supplies as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience.'

Did the power cuts cause you a major problem? Contact reporter David Freezer on 01603 772418 or by email to david.freezer@archant.co.uk