NATIONAL grid has apologised after more than a thousand homes and businesses across two large areas of Exmoor suffered a power cut on Thursday (June 26).

The outage happened a few minutes after 11 am and lasted several hours.

It affected properties across two areas south of Porlock and to the east of Porlock Weir, stretching nearly as far as Wheddon Cross and to the Devon county border.

A National Grid spokesperson said it was caused by a fault on the high voltage network in the area which engineers quickly set to work to repair.

They said all properties should have had power restored by late afternoon.

The outage followed a smaller incident in central Minehead on Monday morning (June 23) when nearly 30 properties lost power for about two-and-a-half hours.

A blown fuse on the network was suspected to have caused the outage, which affected 29 properties from 7.50 am until about 10.20 am.