After five weeks without electricity a family have light again thanks to The Argus.

Trevor and Marylin Norton, both 59, from Plumpton Green, lost power in their house after a tumble dryer exploded on November 2.

After trying for weeks to resolve the problem Trevor felt he had nowhere else to turn.

The Argus spoke to Utility Warehouse, the family’s electricity supplier, on Thursday.

And yesterday Mr Norton was thrilled to confirm he had full use of his house again.

He said: “I’m delighted to have it back, it makes life so much easier. “It’s taken five weeks and we have had no real help from the call centres, we’ve just come up against this wall of bureaucracy with nobody seeming to be able to do anything.

“It’s why I had to call in a favour of a friend and ring the paper. If it was left to them [Utility Warehouse] I’d still be without power for another few weeks.”

UK Power Network turned off the electricity on November 2 for safety reasons following the fire and when they returned to reinstall the supply on November 13 there was a fault at the Nortons’ home.

Mr Norton said: “They came back to reconnect the overhead supply and that’s where it all went wrong. Nobody seemed to want to find out what was wrong with our house.

“We went out and bought a small generator with which we could run the boiler, freezer and TV.

“It couldn’t run 24 hours a day so we’ve had to pick and choose when we needed it.

“The constant palaver that comes with that took its toll – my wife was very distraught about the situation, she was not coping at all well.”

After The Argus got in touch on Thursday a Utility Warehouse spokesman said: “Mr Norton called on November 13 to let us know about a fire which had burned his electricity meter.

“We arranged for a meter replacement to be installed as soon as possible so Mr Norton wouldn’t have to use his generator for electricity and the customer services advisor gave a tentative date of November 29 when she spoke to him.

“However, the network operator, UK Power Networks, had mistakenly marked Mr Nor- ton’s house as ‘disconnected’ in the industry database.

"Fixing this mistake has delayed the installation of his meter until Friday.

“We sincerely apologise for this inconvenience and will install the meter without any charge.”