Fed-up villagers in East Norfolk who have endured long and frequent power cuts since Friday night are being told they should be re-connected to the mains supply by the end of tomorrow.

Five temporary generators have been brought in to provide power to hundreds of homes and businesses in Ormesby and Hemsby while engineers tackle an underground cable fault.

But despite efforts to secure a supply households and a school have still suffered long interruptions in service, apparently because some of the generators have run out of fuel.

One resident of Mill View who asked not to be named said she and her neighbours were furious about the on-going problems and the number of power cuts they were suffering.

While she understood there was a fault that needed fixing, more attention should have been paid to keeping people connected and re-fuelling the generators.

Some people had reportedly lost the contents of their freezers twice since Friday, she said.

The most recent break in service was last night, Tuesday, when dozens of homes lost power from about 9pm to 1.30am, although some households said their electricity was not restored until 3am.

A spokesman for UK Power Networks said: 'We would like to apologise to residents in Dean Avenue, Decoy Road, North Road and Mill View who were affected by another interruption to their electricity supplies last night. Power was restored at 1.30am and engineers are continuing to work to replace the faulty cable and we hope to have all villagers getting their electricity from the main network rather than generators by the end of tomorrow.

'We understand there has been a history of power cuts in the area which is why we are replacing the cable to make electricity supplies more reliable for the future.'

The cable developed a fault at 11.07pm on Saturday which interrupted power to 739 customers in Ormesby and Hemsby.

Supplies were restored in stages from 11.12pm on Saturday to 9.37am on Sunday.

Some people however reported losing power on Friday night.

Engineers are currently on site in North Road, where temporary traffic lights are in place.

UK Power Networks have apologise for the inconvenience caused. Many homes also saw a four-hour break in supply on Monday, when the generators ran out of diesel.

Geoff Freeman, chairman of Ormesby with Scratby Parish Council, said he understood it was a serious network fault adding that it was the second or third time in the last few years that they had dug up the same stretch of road.

'If they are bringing in generators they need to make sure that they are being checked and fitted with some sort of alarm because when they go off they do not seem to know,' he said.