Medway Council staff are urgently trying to re-establish contact with the outside world after their phones and computers all went down this morning.

The reason for the major communications black-out is not known.

Staff are relying on mobile phones to communicate.

The council has posted an apology to callers and web visitors giving an out of hours-only phone number to contact, or suggesting people call into their Strood and Chatham contact points.

The collapse of the council's website is being blamed on "technical difficulties".

One employee said: "Our internal phones are also down, so we haven't been able to contact our IT section."

It is leaving messages that all staff are "busy."

Other phones when called are automatically saying that the member of staff had cleared the line.

A spokesman said: "We hope to be back up as quickly as possible."