Electricity -Fuse Box

[JudieJaws]

Recently my electric power went off - but it was not a power cut to the whole road- it turned out that my next door neighbour had a British Gas engineer just arrived to do some work and he removed the big fuse on their Electric Meter board- for some reason this turned off our electricity too! The engineer was new to the job and had not come across this and he sought advice from Western Electric who apparently look after our electric . They got back to our neighbour and they said it was normal for houses like ours and that the builders sometimes used to link the power supply. We live in an inner terrace of a block of four houses built circa 1930's with the neighbour concerned at the end but it was only them and us that were affected not the other two .My question is more in the way of reassurance that this is ok or if we need to get it looked at. We have lived here for 30 years and our neighbours have been here for about 15 and as far as I am aware this has never happenned before although there have been times when the electric has gone off and back on again while we have been at work, we never questionned the neighbours or connected it to them.Any simple explanation or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance guys.

[The Builder]

I'm guessing here ........ but it sounds like there is one service supply to the block, which is then split into several individual services. I would assume the "master" service would have its own cut-out. This is possibly what the guy removed.
There shouldn't be any need for this, as each property should have its own cut-out on its own incomer. Maybe he was being "over cautious" by killing the whole supply.
In your case, you perhaps share a main service with only the neighbour who was cut off with you.
Your network supplier will always investigate if you think something is wrong with the set-up. Or, an electrician would soon be able to trace the supply cables to confirm the set-up.
As long as you have your own cut-out, proper earth connection, and circuit breakers, you're protected. No worries.
Intermittent breaks in the service are not that unusual, for many reasons. It all depends on location, distance from transformer, age of supply etc etc....... ask for investigation if they become frequent.

[JudieJaws]

Thanks for this, it's much appreciated.

[spudqueen]

Just a thought, but when was your house last re-wired? If you've been there 30 years and never had it done then maybe it's time you thought about getting it done. I'm sure that if you did the electrician would ensure that this couldn't happen again.