EIGHT calls to Cheshire Police via the emergency 999 number were 'possibly left unanswered' this morning.

Police have confirmed that the force experienced a temporary loss of telephone service today, Thursday, due to electrical work at one of the call centres.

As a result of this, the 999 service was down intermittently for a period of 24 minutes.

During this time, the public were advised to contact the police via the website or email for non-urgent matters.

A spokesman for the force said: "We are confident that the risk to the public was minimal.

"During the outage a total of eight 999 calls were identified as possibly unanswered.

"A review has identified that all these calls were dealt with appropriately either by Cheshire Constabulary or our neighbouring forces as per our normal contingency plans.

"We apologise to anyone who was inconvenienced."

A second technical issue was also reported this afternoon involving the non-emergency 101 number.

This meant the force was unable to receive calls on the 101 number.

But it is understood the problem was fixed two minutes later.