More than 1,000 homes lost power in Rainham last night due to an underground fault.

The supply was cut off in the centre of the town just before 8pm. It affected London Road and the surrounding area.

Power was restored to almost 200 customers by 8.30pm but some had to wait until almost 10.30pm to be reconnected.

A spokesman for UK Power Networks said the black-out was caused by a fault on the on the underground electricity distribution network.

He added: “UK Power Networks engineers restored supplies to the first 193 customers at 8.31pm with further restorations in various groups in the following hours.

The final 20 customers had power again at 10.25pm.

“We appreciate how difficult it can be to lose power and would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by this incident.”