Residents are furious after being left in the dark by numerous power cuts.

People living in Eskdale Ave-nue, Shelf, claim they have been left without electricity on more than 20 occasions in the last two years.

Yorkshire Electricity Distrib-ution Ltd has apologised but the company has admitted it is yet to locate the cause of the fault.

Resident Catherine Horsfall, 30, a financial adviser on maternity leave, said: "The power cuts happen regularly and without warning.

"I am absolutely furious because it seems they will happen for as long as we live here."

Mrs Horsfall, who lives with her husband Simon and their four-month-old son Callum, said: "At one time the power went in the middle of December on a late evening. We have a baby boy. My husband was just carrying him and was halfway up the stairs when it went pitch black.

"I screamed and told him not to move as I went to find a torch."

Mum-of-two Amanda Coyne, 34, has lived in the street with her family for just over a year.

Mrs Coyne said: "It happens so often that I have started keeping a record and I am going to make a formal complaint to the electricity company. It is annoying.

"We can be left without light or heat for hours."

Jean Winter, 51, who works as an accounting technician from her home, said she had lost information on her computer as a result of the cuts.

She said: "The electricity has gone off when I have had clients and I have had to tell them about their tax bills by candlelight. It is very embarrassing."

Electronics engineer Robert Turner, 47, said: "I travel all over the world and go to China where they have limited electricity supply but I have never seen anything like this.

"There have been more than 20 power cuts in the last two years.

"I keep having to reset all the clocks in the house, the computer keeps crashing and people's burglar alarms keep going off. It is just unacceptable."

A YEDL spokesman said: "The interruptions have been caused by an intermittent fault on an underground mains cable.

"Most faults of this nature develop over weeks to a permanent condition whereby we can locate and repair the section of cable. Unfortunately this has not been the case.

"In this case the fault appears to have disappeared from the system as there has been a period of six months without the fault reoccurring.

"Our repairs manager will be arranging for the installation of fault location equipment and will be monitoring the progress personally."