Flights Delayed As Lightning Strikes Gatwick

Departing flights at Gatwick Airport were suspended when lightning struck a traffic control tower as thunderstorms swept across large parts of England.

The incident at around 2pm led to the temporary failure of some ground-based systems and there were no departures for around half an hour.

No-one was hurt and there was no structural damage at the airport, one of the UK's busiest.

At around the same time a teaching assistant survived unscathed after he was knocked to the ground by a lightning strike in Sutton, south London.

Tom Langham, 25, who works at Hackbridge Primary School, was taken to hospital for a check-up.

Headteacher Jacquie Fairhust said: "Afterwards he said he was fine but felt like he had been in a round with Mike Tyson."

Firefighters were called to a number of houses in the South East after they were struck with lightning.

Crews tackled a serious blaze at a house in Maidenbower, near Crawley, West Sussex, after it was hit at about 2.30pm.

In Kent, up to 30 firefighters attended a lightening-related fire at a property in Gravesend.

Train services between London and Brighton were disrupted due to a lightning strike between Horley and Three Bridges. There were also delays in parts of Hertfordshire.

Some of the heaviest rainfall came in the South East, with 9mm of rain falling in just one our in Cavendish, Suffolk.

The storms followed the hottest day of the year on Monday, with the Environment Agency warning some areas could experience flash flooding.

Lightning was unlikely to have been the cause of a blaze which broke out in a high-rise flat block in south London, London Fire Brigade (LFB) said.

Up to 40 firefighters were called to the scene in Abbey Street, in Bermondsey, at about 2pm, where smoke was seen billowing from the 21-storey building.

They had the blaze in a flat on the 17th floor under control by 4pm. LFB has not confirmed the cause.