Hundreds of homes in County Durham and thousands across the country have been left without power this morning as the power grid faces outages due to Storm Lilian.

Homes in North West Durham have been left without power which may not be restored until later this evening, it is understood.

Properties in Annfield Plain, Consett, Blackhill, Allensford, Shotley Field and Leadgate have been affected by the outage. 

63,000 customers across the country are estimated to have been affected since 5am this morning (August 22) - with power estimated to be fully restored by 6pm.

A statement by Northern Powergrid reads: "Storm Lilian has impacted our North East and Yorkshire regions, bringing strong winds since 5am this morning, with the worst affected area being West Yorkshire.

"We are experiencing high levels of disruption to power supplies with over 63,418 customers having been affected so far. Our teams responded quickly and have already managed to reconnect over 27,000 customers of those who have been impacted.

"We will keep customers updated regularly via text message, on our website and on our social media channels.

"We know how difficult it can be for our customers during a power cut and we will continue to work throughout the storm to get the power back on as quickly as possible.

"The situation is fast-moving, and we will keep monitoring our progress to give customers the best estimate of when power is likely to be back on.

"This may change as the impact of the storm on the network becomes clear, and we need to ensure it is safe for our engineers to be working, but we will keep customers informed as soon as we know more."