Residents have been told they may be without electricity to start the New Year after their street’s power lines collapsed.

Busheyfields Road in Herne was closed between Curtis Wood Road and Canterbury Road at about 11am.

Engineers are at the scene trying to fix the faulty lines, but Kent County Council's Highways team says there is also a "water leak" in the area.

Video courtesy of Jake Gregg

Jake Gregg, who lives in Busheyfields Road, filmed one of the cables “exploding and sparking” at about 10.30am.

The 25-year-old said: “My girlfriend was upstairs and shouted down to me that the pole was on fire. I went running outside and called the fire brigade.

“The whole power line blew off the transformer and was lying in the road. There were explosions, sparks and bangs. I was pretty shocked."

Police were also called to the scene just before 11am to cordon off the road to allow for the repairs take place.

But Mr Gregg says residents have been told that this could take “hours or days”.

“The whole street is out of power,” he said. “We’ve been told that this could last for hours or days.

“It’s inconvenient for us. We were planning on having people over for New Year, but that can’t happen now so we’ve made other arrangements.”

However, UK Power Networks estimates the power will be back on between 3.30pm and 4.30pm.

Its spokesman, Niamh Arnett, said: "Engineers are working as quickly as possible to restore power supplies to 53 customers in Busheyfield Road, Herne Bay.

"A fault on an overhead line initially interrupted supplies to 19 customers at 10.51am and to safely reconnect supplies engineers needed to switch off supplies to a further 34 customers at 12.14pm.

"Our teams continue working on site to reconnect all supplies as swiftly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Electricity to the homes has since been restored and the road is now open.