A power at a supermarket caused chaos for customers who could not pay for their groceries.

Scores of shoppers were forced to “dump their trolley-loads of shopping” after a power cut at ASDA in Brighton Marina. 

Frustrated shoppers said the power cut out at 1.30pm and lasted for about an hour. 

Shoppers at the store said staff were turning people away from the tills while some families, who had been shopping in the store for lengthy periods, left empty handed. 

 

Lorraine Bennett said: "It’s a Friday afternoon so people are busy stoicking up for the weekend but they’re just being turned away.

"It's all a bit mad. People are still going around filling their trollies up and doing shopping, unaware they’ll get turned away at the tills. A lady said it had been going on for more than an hour but I've not heard any announcements over the tannoy."

Jamie, 25, a kickboxing instructor said: "It's baffling that a multi-national like Walmart experiences this."

He added: "I've been waiting 23 minutes. I've got frozen stuff and it's melting at the moment."

A spokeswoman from Asda said the "local area" was affected by the cut.

She added: "It wasn't just our store and we weren’t turning customers away with their shopping. In these circumstances standard practice is to agree a price with customers already in store so they can still take their shopping home and stock up their fridges and larders.

"We pride ourselves on putting our customers first and saving them money and we usually err on the side of caution in these circumstances - I wouldn’t be surprised if our customers bagged themselves a bargain."

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the Royal Sussex County Hospital, said it did not experience a powercut.