Passport e-gates are back online at Luton Airport but disruption is still expected after terminals across the UK were struck by the issue last night.

Described by the Home Office as a "nationwide issue", airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Manchester were also impacted by the failure on Tuesday evening.

Border officials were forced to manually process travellers instead, with images and footage shared on social media showing long queues forming at passport control.

"eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight," said a Home Office spokesperson.

"As soon as engineers detected a wider system network issue at 7.44pm last night, a large scale contingency response was activated within six minutes.

"At no point was border security compromised, and there is no indication of malicious cyber activity."

A spokesperson for Luton Airport confirmed that the system was now up and running again, and was quick to apologise for any inconvenience caused to passengers.

"Following last night’s nationwide network issue impacting e-gates operated by UK Border Force, additional colleagues were on hand to provide assistance to inbound passengers as Border Force worked to resolve the situation," said the spokesperson.

"We apologise for any impact this may have had to passenger journeys."