Chelmsford has been given the go-ahead to race on Thursday after a floodlight failure forced an early end to Tuesday’s card.

The track was plunged into darkness during the third race and the decision was taken to call off the rest of the meeting.

An investigation of the problem with the lights was carried out on Wednesday, and the British Horseracing Authority confirmed it was happy for Thursday’s meeting to go ahead as planned.

A statement said: “We have been working with the racecourse executive to ensure the floodlighting issue has been resolved.

“We have received a report and regular updates from the racecourse, and our inspector of courses has been on-site throughout today and has witnessed the remedied floodlight system and switch room in operation.

“An explanation has been provided via a specialist engineer as to the nature of the fault that caused the issue and we are satisfied that the overall system is working correctly and that the racecourse has safeguarded against it failing in the same circumstances.

“As such, subject to final checks this evening, Thursday’s fixture has been given approval to go ahead.”

Racecourse manager Fraser Garrity had earlier apologised for the incident and announced racegoers will receive their money back while goodwill gestures will be made to participants of the third race. Those due to be involved in later races will get £300, while jockeys will also get their fees.

He added: “We are fully committed to and pride ourselves on providing a very good racing experience for all our customers at Chelmsford City Racecourse. We were not able to achieve that last night and are now working flat out to return to normality from tomorrow.”