Shoppers were left in the dark when a power cut affected a busy town centre on Saturday morning.

About 2,800 homes and businesses in Rainham lost their electricity supply at 11am.

This included all the shops in Rainham Shopping Precinct off London Road, some of which had to close.

The traffic lights in Station Road were also affected.

Power was restored to the majority of customers at 11.22am with the final 700 reconnected 40 minutes later.

A spokesman for EDF Energy said: "

"The loss of power was due to a fault in an underground cable. We sent engineers to locate the fault.

"We would like to apologise to those affected for any inconvenience caused."