Virgin Media broadband customers have complained that they are unable to access the internet this morning.

They were also unable to check the service status of their internet, due to 'essential' maintenance work on the My Virgin website.

A message on the My Virgin website says work is underway on an upgrade.

It said: "We're doing some work on My Virgin Media at the moment as part of an upgrade to provide you with an even better service.

"We're sorry this part of the site isn't available at the moment. Everything will be back to normal again soon, so please come back and try again shortly."

However, despite responding to customers on social media who expressed concern that their internet was not working, Virgin later insisted there was no widespread issue.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “Our broadband services are running as normal – there is no national broadband outage affecting our network.”

Many Virgin Media users said they have not been able to get online for several hours, causing issues for those working from home.

Sue Grant tweeted: "Can't check status in my area as you are carrying out "essential works on your systems".

"Can't record it anywhere for a refund. Working from home so it's essential. Any ideas?"

Another customer wrote: "All services down for 2 hours and now I'm told no engineers for a week. How is this possibly an acceptable service for the amount I pay?"

Twitter user @PhilldotBlog tweeted: "Typical of @virginmedia every week there is an issue. I need to work as a freelance web developer. Been down for 3 hours and been on hold for 40 mins to them."

(Image: downdetector.co.uk)

At 11.30am outage tracking website Down Detector said there were 270 reports of people suffering connection problems - though Virgin Media claim that Down Detector does not provide an accurate assessment.

A map on the website showed reports of outages in several areas including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow.

Virgin Media have told customers engineers are working on the connection problems.

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A tweet to a customer said: "I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues with internet and TV services.

"We don't mean to interrupt your viewing and browsing experience.

"Rest assured that our engineers are doing their best to get this resolved as soon as they can."