An award-winning pub landlord blasted one of the UK's largest power companies after being told his electricity will be cut off.

Robert Taylor, who runs The Compasses Inn in Crundale near Canterbury, branded UK Power Networks as "bullies" after being told of next Wednesday's outage.

The firm told the 37-year-old yesterday planned works will plunge the Shepherd Neame pub into darkness during service hours, effectively costing him bookings.

He told KentOnline: "It seems to me like bully tactics, it is as if the big companies don't want to help the smaller companies.

"We're a small company and pride ourselves on being professional and if we have to cancel bookings people will think we are unprofessional.

"It's not so much about the financial side of it.

"People could have booked for a special occasion or could be coming from far away, we have a lot of customers from as far as London."

Mr Taylor, whose 16th century pub in Sole Street was named a national finalist for Best Food Pub in 2016, added UK Power Network should carry out the work overnight.

In a tweet to the firm yesterday afternoon he claimed a generator wasn't offered to help mitigate disruption.

It attracted a string of tweets from other venues claiming they had received similar treatment, including a school for autistic children.

Jackie Neve, who works at Great Oaks Small School in Minster, wrote: "UK Power Networks informed our school that on February 7 we would not have power.

"I rang to double check and they confirmed we made a decision to close the school.

"Today they said they made a mistake.

"Our children are autistic, we also cancelled their school afternoon trip,

"An apology is not good enough."

Mr Taylor, who has ran the pub with wife Donna for six years, claims UK Power Networks said it only needs to give business two days notice for planned outage.

He asked why the maintenance, set to take place from 9am-3pm, can't be carried out overnight.

"It doesn't make sense to me, when I lived in Australia companies would carry out this kind of work overnight - why isn't this company?"

UK Power Networks has been contacted for comment.