People living in parts of Gillingham were without electricity after a power cut this afternoon.

About 60 homes and businesses were left without power which included Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre.

According to reports on social networking site, Facebook, it closed its shops and restaurants for some time as a result.

The cut, which happened shortly after noon, was caused by a fault to an underground electricity cable.

The outage is the second in the area, after one Rainham on Tuesday which left hundreds of homes without power for a short time.

A spokesman for UK Power Networks said engineers worked to restore the power as soon as possible.

She added: said: “Engineers worked to restore 56 power supplies in the ME7 area after a fault developed on an underground cable, interrupting supplies at 12.17pm and it was restored by 1.35pm.

“We would like to apologise for the inconvenience particularly at this busy time.”