Portsmouth power cut leaves thousands in darkness

A major power outage plunged large areas of Portsmouth into a blackout earlier this evening.

A fault at a network primary substation caused a power cut to 50,000 homes and businesses across Portsmouth, Waterlooville and Gosport.

The area was without power for 30 minutes from 21:00 GMT.

Scottish and Southern Electric are investigating what caused the fault but the "important thing was to get the power back on," a spokesman said.

One man in Portsmouth posted on Twitter that he had been "evacuated from cinema due to city wide #powercut in Portsmouth. Quite exciting".

Another Twitter user added "even the streetlights were out," with others reporting a loss of mobile signal.