PARTS OF Basingstoke are reporting power cuts this lunch time, with shops and petrol stations closed.

Around 1,300 properties were initally affected by the outage, caused by a fault on the high voltage network around midday.

Engineers from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) managed to restore power to 650 properties within the first ten minutes.

SSEN aim to restore power by 3pm, saying that is their priority before investigating the fault.

Residents in Chineham and Oakridge have taken to social media to complain about the cut, which has closed all shops in Chineham Shopping Centre.

The petrol station at Tesco is also coned off.

Reports first started coming in at around 12.15pm, with Facebook users complaining on social media.

Residents said that Chineham, as well as the Norn Hill area of Oakridge are currently affected.

A spokesperson from SSEN said: "We'd like to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused as our engineers work to restore power as quickly as possible."