Power has been restored to all businesses and homes along Great Yarmouth's Golden Mile - 24 hours after the first shortage.

Large parts of Marine Parade lost power yesterday afternoon following a fire at an electrical sub-station. The Hippodrome Circus was forced to cancel shows and traffic lights went out.

More than 1,200 customers were initially affected but engineers worked through the night and used generators to restore power to all the properties by 2.15am this morning.

Unfortunately at 8.40am one of the generators failed, leaving some customers without power again.

A spokesman for UK Power Networks said: 'Engineers worked as quickly as was safely possible to repair the generator and power was restored to all customers by 12.25pm today.

'Regrettably, also at about 8.40am today, 34 customers in the Nelson Road area had their power interrupted for a second time as a result of yesterday's fault.

'Our engineers worked hard to restore electricity supplies to all customers by 1.30pm. We will continue to investigate the cause of the interruptions.

'We would like to sincerely apologise to all our customers in this area who have been affected. We know how difficult and frustrating it can be to be without power and would like to reassure our customers that we have worked as quickly as we can to restore their electricity supplies to normal.'

Jack Button, who runs Jack's Jetty Snacks on the seafront, was among the businesses without power this morning.

He estimates a £1,000 loss in trade and is having to throw away seven freezers-full of ice cream.

'We lost power at 2.30pm yesterday and had to shut which is not good at the height of the summer season,' said Mr Button, who opened the cafe in April.

'They got generators up and running in the early hours of the morning, but this morning the power went off again. I received a call around 9.30am and was told the power should be back about midday - but I don't know, we'll have to wait and see.'

As previously reported, fire crews from Yarmouth, Gorleston and a water carrier from Hethersett were called the sub station in Devonshire Road at about 2.15pm after reports of an explosion resulting in a fire.

Crews used hand appliances to extinguish the flames, but the blaze caused power problems along the Golden Mile on one of the busiest days of the summer season.