The county is set for another heatwave that will last longer than July’s record-breaking hot spell, with a high of 30C.

Temperatures over the coming days will remain lower than last month’s scorching 43.C, but the dry weather will continue over a “prolonged period”, the Met Office has said.

Kent is likely to see sunshine and dry conditions over the coming week.

Today saw wall-to-wall sunshine - with the UK's high of 28.1C recorded in Frittenden in the Weald of Kent.

The county is predicted to reach 30C on Friday and Saturday this week - the same as Hamilton, Bermuda.

Met Office meteorologist, Tom Morgan, said: “It will be a lot of sunshine for a vast majority of the UK and also temperatures rising day after day.

“It does look like a prolonged period of dry weather and obviously that’s bad news for southern England where some rain would really be useful now.

“In terms of temperatures we’re looking at them build from 28C or 29C tomorrow to the low to mid 30s from Thursday onwards, so a fairly widespread heatwave developing across the UK this week.

“The peak of the temperatures look likely to occur on Friday or Saturday.”

The Met Office has also issued a Level Two alert - urging people to follow precautions to avoid becoming overheated - including closing curtains and windows during the day and avoiding the midday sun.

Mr Morgan added: “The heatwave we saw at the end of July, that was relatively short-lived and saw exceptionally high, record-breakingly high temperatures.

“We’re quite confident temperatures will not go as high as they did during July, but the difference is that this is going to be quite a prolonged period of temperatures in the low 30s, so it will be very notable nonetheless.

“Heatwave criteria are likely to be met across many parts of the UK and there will no doubt be some adverse impacts from heatwave exhaustion, dehydration and so on, so we do anticipate some potentially adverse effects to the NHS and more vulnerable people having heat-related problems through this period of time.”

Predicted rising temperatures comes after South East Water announced this week that a hosepipe ban will come into effect across large parts of Kent following one of the driest summers on record.

The temporary restrictions mean customers will be prevented from using hosepipes for watering their gardens, washing cars, patios and boats and from filling swimming and paddling pools.