A city, towns and villages were plunged into darkness last night - with a power cut continuing to cause chaos this morning.

More than 75,000 properties were affected by a mass outage late last night across St Albans, Borehamwood, and Hatfield.

The lights and power went out shortly before 11pm with dozens of people reporting the fault to UK Power Networks and even more taking to social media to see if anyone else was affected.

Some mobile networks also went down, and traffic lights and streetlights switched off too.

The power was back in most homes by 11.30pm with UKPN revealing the outage was due to a faulty piece of network equipment at one of its substations requiring the power to be switched off.

But the problems are not over - the tunnel that runs under The Galleria shopping centre in Hatfield has been shut both ways for hours due to the power problems.

Engineers have been on site assessing the safety of the tunnel - the A1 has finally reopened in both directions after it was shut for more than six hours.

Roads across Hatfield, St Albans, and Welham Green were gridlocked, with tailbacks stretching for miles in both directions on the A1.

Traffic is now beginning to clear.

Last night, Hertfordshire Fire & Rescue said it took many calls after the power cut but warned people it was not a 999 issue.