McDonald’s has apologised for an IT problem that left customers around the globe, including in the UK, unable to order food.

Problems are understood to have initially started in countries including Japan, Australia and New Zealand with both staff and customers reporting the outage.

However on Friday morning at around 6am – according to website Downdetector which monitors IT issues in companies – problems began to emerge across the UK.

Customers also took to social media to complain that they had experienced problems when ordering or had found their local branch closed.

McDonald's says the outage is unrelated to cyber-security.

It said in a statement: "We are aware of a technology outage which impacted our restaurants.

"The issue has now been resolved in the UK and Ireland.

"We thank customers for their patience and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

"The issue is not related to a cybersecurity event."