A 999 call reporting a body in the river at Gravesend turned out to be an elaborate hoax.

The call had staff from four agencies, including RNLI, coastguard, police and the Port of London Authority scrambling to search the riverbanks for any sign of a body.

The search and rescue mission lasted two hours, tying up at least eight emergency workers, as well as officers from the Met and Essex Police forces.

David Greenfield, duty helmsman for the Gravesend RNLI crew who responded to the call on Thursday, April 30, said: "We had a call from the coastguard at 1.20pm saying they had received a disconnected 999 call reporting a body seen floating in the river in the Denton area.

"We went down there and searched all along the waterfront but didn't find anything."

The PLA harbour launch was also sent to help with the search, along with two North Kent Police officers, who were due to meet the person who reported seeing a body.

However, the man never showed up.

Mr Greenfield said: "It all started to sound very suspicious. Apparently the man had called back after the first disconnected call and came out with an elaborate story about how he had spotted a body down near Denton at 3am on Thursday morning.

"He gave such a good description of the body, but surely anyone who had really seen one would have called 999 immediately, not waited until hours later."

He added that hoax calls to the RNLI are relatively rare with only two or three received every year.

Meanwhile, a phone company had managed to trace the call to the Windmill Street area of Gravesend.

Mr Greenfield added: "It's from the same area that we've had two hoax calls from before, but they were by kids.

"It is annoying and a complete waste of people's time, but we just used it as a training exercise."