Large parts of a town and a shopping centre were left without power this afternoon after a major outage.

Areas of Ashford came to a standstill for about two hours after the lights went out at about 1pm.

Park Mall shopping centre was among the places without power, with a tattoo parlour forced to leave a customer with an unfinished tattoo after the electricty went off halfway through.

WH Smith, Barclays Bank, Iceland and Boots are some of the sites which have been forced to close due to the outage.

It had affected County Square shopping centre but its power quickly returned.

Tat 2 Ltd tattooist Matt Goldup described how the electricity switched off as he was about to apply colour to a strawberry on the shoulder of Grace Hollingsworth.

He said: "I’ve got a customer with half a tattoo.

"This is my only one of the day but we’ve still got a few hours to go on it. We may have to close up for the day and lose money.

"It’s a strawberry on her shoulder. If I end up calling it for the day.

"I’ll have to call her back after two weeks of healing before we can work on the rest.”

It’s believed an underground electricity cable faulted on UK Power Network’s high voltage network, causing an area-wide power cut.

Power was restored at about 3pm.

Victim Support Kent, based in Tufton Street, has tweeted to say they are not likely to be able to answer calls until tomorrow.

UK Power Network spokesman Niamh Arnett said: "Engineers are working to restore electricity supplies to 116 customers in the Edinburgh Road area of Ashford following a fault on the underground network at 1.08pm today.

"We apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused."