INTERMITTENT power cuts of a few minutes at a time have affected homes and businesses across Thurrock this afternoon.

The sporadic outages were experienced from as far west as North Stifford to Corringham in the east.

UK Power Networks say that the problem is an underground cable on its high voltage network which has faulted.

Just before 5pm it issued a statement: "Our engineers have arrived on site and are investigating the fault.

"You may find your power is going on and off; that is normal for this type of issue and is due to our engineers working to divert power remotely."

At 5.30pm a second statement said: "Engineers from UK Power Networks are working as quickly as possible to restore power supplies to 370 customers in the Orsett area.

"Following a fault on the underground network which initially affected 2,228 customers in Stanford-le-Hope and Orsett just before 4pm today, supplies were restored in stages to most customers by 4.46pm.

"We apologise for the inconvenience caused and work is continuing to reconnect the remaining supplies as quickly as possible."