Hundreds without gas after fault detected in Witham - BBC

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Hundreds of homes have been without gas since Thursday evening after the mains were switched off because of a fault.

Residents in the King Edward Way area of Witham, in Essex, will be without gas until the as-yet undiagnosed fault can be fixed, supplier Cadent said.

The company switched off the gas at the mains and sent about 30 engineers to the site who worked until 22:30 BST.

More are expected to arrive later as Cadent said engineers "need to visit each property to turn gas meters off".

About 25 roads in the area are understood to be affected.

At present, it is not yet known what caused the incident and the company is unable to say how long it might take to fix.

In a statement, a Cadent spokesman said: "Yesterday (Thursday 13 April) Cadent was made aware of a loss of gas to a number of properties in the King Edward Way area of Witham, Essex.

"Engineers were immediately mobilised to go to site and investigate the matter further.

"Last night, around 30 of our team attended the incident and began working to resolve the matter, as well as visiting around a third of the affected properties.

"Work ended for the night at around 10.30pm when we took the decision that residents would not want to answer their door past this time. We will be sending more of our engineers on to site today and work will begin from around 8am."

Homes on King Edward Way in Witham, Essex

He said restoring gas to all properties was "our main priority" but stressed that "this will require an engineer to visit each affected property before this can happen".

He said engineers would be knocking on doors again on Friday.

"Once this is complete, we can start to restore gas to the network and then we can begin to restore gas to each property.

"We urge residents not to attempt to turn their gas back on themselves, our engineers need to do this safely for them."

He thanked people for their understanding and said the company was working "as quickly as possible" to resolve the issue.