Efforts to restore power to just ONE house brought Canterbury’s roads to a standstill this morning.

Motorists heading into the city were stuck in rush-hour tailbacks caused largely by four-way traffic lights at the St Stephen’s Road roundabout earlier today.

Some drivers reported crawling in queues for more than an hour-and-a-half as the impact of the roadworks left a number of key routes gridlocked.

And KentOnline can reveal the lights were put in place so UK Power Networks could attempt to reconnect a damaged electricity supply to a single home in St Stephen’s Road.

Ethan Cascino, who lives at the affected house, says his family lost power earlier this month and have been forced to use a huge back-up generator supplied by the energy firm.

Engineers were seen digging up the pavement opposite in a bid to identify the issue, with one worker telling a passerby the work could last for “days”.

Mr Cascino, 22, explained: “There was a bit of damage done a couple of weeks ago to the main electric line which runs off the grid into just our house.

“At the bit where it separates, it’s been cut from weather damage, which is what has caused it.

“We are just running off the big generator which [the power company] provided out the front.

“They started digging this morning and I think they’re going to repair the split in the weather-damaged wires which lead to our house.”

The work required temporary lights to be installed on all four roads leading to St Stephen’s Road roundabout, sparking huge delays for those travelling into the city from Herne Bay and Broad Oak Road.

The knock-on effect also caused huge queues on the approach from Harbledown, with one motorist exclaiming: “I was stuck so long on the Rheims Way, Google Maps is telling me I recently parked there.”

Mr Cascino described the impact of the work as having a “domino effect” on motorists.

“I guess it does affect multiple people, but I haven’t put too much thought into it as I didn’t realise [the traffic] was going to ripple like that,” the warehouse worker added.

He says his family have not been able to cook meals since power was lost as the generator only supplies “low-level energy”.

“We haven’t had our ovens so we’ve had to have takeaways, unfortunately,” he said.

A spokesman for UK Power Networks confirmed in the morning that engineers were on-site carrying out “essential repairs to the underground electricity network” to maintain “reliable” supplies in the area.

“For safety reasons, temporary traffic lights are needed while our team excavate and repair the fault,” he said.

“We apologise for the disruption and will complete this work as quickly as possible.”

Shortly after midday he added it had been decided to carry out the work outside of peak daytime hours.

“We are proactively removing our roadworks and will be completing this work overnight, under a road closure, to minimise the traffic impact,” he explained.

It is not known how long the work will take to complete.