Competition for customers was swept aside as businesses helped their rivals with offers of space, electricity and cups of tea following the power failure, which initially started at around 9.45am to shops on one side of the street on Thursday.

Customers from hair salons Jennifer Jayne and Stylistics, dashed from one side of the street to the other to finish their trims at other hairdressers including KS1 and Dean's Barbers.

Spray tans were also temporarily moved from beauty salon Zync across the road to Cheeky Monkey's – a new children's clothing shop currently being decorated.

Owner of Cheeky Monkey's, which is set to open on August 30, Rochelle Brophy, said there was a real community spirit in the air as everyone chipped in to help each other out.

Rochelle loaned Zync the use of her upstairs floor as it hadn't been decorated yet and it didn't matter if spray tan got on the walls.

She said: "It's just helping everyone out and there were old ladies with hair curlers still in their hair walking across the street to get their hair done."

Jessica Boyce, who runs Zync for owner and sister Angelique Blake, said the whole situation has lost the business hundreds of pounds.

She said: "Thursday is one of our busiest days because it's the only day we do beauty at the moment.

"One lady came in for her birthday and we had to turn her away; she was very disappointed. It's ridiculous, we had to cancel everyone.

"But it's really nice that everyone is helping out."
EDF Energy were on the scene half an hour after the power cut. However, work to establish the cause of the fault came back fruitless and the road was closed at 6pm to allow further investigations.

Excavation work was carried out overnight and EDF cut off supplies to 54 customers from 4.30am to 5.18am on Friday morning while engineers worked on the network.

Power was restored to the final premises at 2.58pm on Friday, however the road remained closed to complete the repair of underground cables.

Under rules set by regulator Ofgem, EDF confirmed that in normal circumstances, "if it takes us more than 18 hours to restore power, customers can claim a Guaranteed Standard payment of £50, for a residential customer, or £100, for business customers."