A POWER CUT has left businesses facing the prospect of being without electricity until the early hours of tomorrow morning.

The outage, which affected 22 properties in Higher Bridge Street, near Bolton town centre, was reported at about 1.30pm today.

It is believed to have been caused by an underground cable fault.

Energy provider Electricity North West has, on its website, given an ‘estimated time of restoration’ of 2.30am tomorrow.

But businesses in the area said the power cut was causing them serious problems, which would get worse the longer it went on.

Two of the town’s main car dealerships were among those affected.

Gary Worrall, after-sales service adviser at BCC Citroen said cars in for repair had been left stuck on workshop ramps.

He said: “It’s been a bit of an issue for us, the ramps are still not working.

“It’s having a knock-on effect on a lot of things. We’re not able to fulfil all our functions at the moment. We’re working on the floor where possible.

“But we have vehicles in the air we need to get down again.”

He added that the loss to the business would depend on when the power returned.

“It depends on whether we can get the vehicles ready for customers to pick up. That’s the knock on effect for us and the inconvenience for customers.”

The garages valeting business was also affected with about a dozen cars still awaiting a service.

Nearby Marshall Mercedes Benz was also experiencing problems.

A reception worker said they had missed out on possible customers as they were not able to receive telephone calls or emails.

She said “There’s nothing we can do except talk to customers face-to-face,” but added the garage was hoping to find a work-around.

Mominkhan Sherzad, director of Smart Hand Car Wash, said he had taken a big financial hit during a short space of time.

He said: “I have lost my customers they are going to join another car wash, and if they do that they will never come back here, so I have lost business as well.

“People have been sat here and have gone because I’ve told them nothing is working.

“I’m angry about it. I do a hard job all the time and have lost some of by business now.”

The 31-year-old estimated that he could lose in the region of £500 if the power remained off for the rest of the working day.

And Crompton's Convenience Store was left unable to take anything other than cash payments or issue lottery tickets.

Shop assistant Ali Shaik said: “My main concern is for the frozen items and what’s going to happen to them. I can only leave them for so long.”

He added that the shop was missing out on about 10 customers an hour, due to the outage.

A spokesperson for Electricity North West added: "Our engineers have removed customers power for safety reasons whilst we establish the exact cause of the problem.

"We’re on site working to fix the problem and hope to have customers on soon."