A POWER cut left almost a thousand homes and businesses without power and caused some traffic lights to fail in York this morning.

Northern Powergrid said the power cut was reported at about 7.45am in the Micklegate and Blossom Street area.

The company later confirmed the cut affected the YO1, YO23 and YO24 areas, leaving hundreds of homes and businesses in Blossom Street, The Mount and the Holgate Road area without power.

Traffic lights have failed in Tadcaster Road in Dringhouses, at the turn-off to St Helen's Road, which is affecting traffic between York and the A64.

In a social media message, the company said: "We’re sorry about the power cut affecting a large number of customers in the #York area. Engineers are en route to investigate."

A company spokeswoman said the fault was repaired by engineers at 9am, and was due to a fault with an underground cable.

However the power tripped again at 9.02am, and the engineer had to repair the fault a second time, leaving power up and running by 9.12am.

Yesterday, about 1,900 properties in the YO24 and YO26 postcodes were victims of power cuts from 3.40pm until about 5.30pm.

Again, the fault was due to an underground cable, which was fixed and faulted again at 5.55pm. The fault was repaired and all properties were back online by 6.35pm.