THOUSANDS of homes and businesses in Maidstone were left without electricity this morning following a power cut.

The town centre and outlying areas lost all power and some company phone networks went down. Traffic lights were knocked out and council parking meters were left useless.

Those living in places like Barming, Shepway, Fairmeadow and Grove Green were all hit by the power failure which was caused by a fault at a local sub station.

A Seeboard spokeswoman said: "One of our major sub stations in the area suffered a very large high voltage fault but we were able to restore power within 25 minutes.

"We are still investigating what caused the fault and apologise to all our customers for any inconvenience caused to them."

Maidstone firefighters were called out to two people stuck in lifts in the town centre. They also attended a string of false fire alarms.