Engineers will be working overnight to restore broadband to thousands of homes in West Cumbria.

People in the Maryport, Flimby and Workington areas have been affected by the outage since around 10.30pm last night.

While some households are due to get their internet connection restored this evening, others will have to wait until engineers repair the fault overnight.

It was initially reported the damage had been caused by a vehicle hitting the network cabinet.

However police confirmed the outage is due to theft of copper.

A spokesman for Cumbria police said: "Officers are investigating an offence of theft of copper cabling which has resulted in broadband services being knocked out in the Maryport area.

"It is believed the broadband wires were cut whilst the thieves stole adjacent copper cabling.

"The theft is believed to have occurred at some time between 9pm and 11pm on Monday, April 6 in the Northside area of Workington."

Engineers have been on site throughout the day and will continue to work overnight.

Some customers should have their internet back this evening.

A TalkTalk spokesman said: “We’re aware that some customers around Workington and Maryport have experienced a loss of service due to issues with the Openreach network.

"While engineers are still working on site, we’ve rerouted our services so TalkTalk customers should now be reconnected.

"We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

A spokesman for Openreach said: “We can confirm that an overnight cable theft has caused damage to our network between Maryport and Workington that is affecting broadband service to some of our customers in the area.

“Our engineers are currently on site and will be working through the night to fix the damage as quickly as possible in order to restore full service. We would ask any customers that are experiencing problems with their service to raise a fault with their communication provider so that we’re aware.”

Anyone with information on the theft is asked to report it to police referencing log 76 of April 7.

Email: 101@cumbria.police.uk; call non-emergency number: 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.