British telecoms firm Virgin Media said it had restored broadband services after an earlier issue on Tuesday left thousands of customers reporting widespread problems with internet access.

There were more than 27,000 reports of Virgin Media outages on the Downdetector website by 0700 GMT, with problems beginning in the early hours of Tuesday and most users reporting that their internet was not working.

The company said its contact centres were also impacted by the issue, and the group's website appeared to be down at times.

"We’ve restored broadband services for customers but are closely monitoring the situation as our engineers continue to investigate. We apologise for any inconvenience caused," a Virgin Media spokesperson said.

Virgin Media O2 is owned by Liberty Global and Spain's Telefonica. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, Andy Bruce and Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Kate Holton)