London, 8 May 2024 (PA Media/dpa/MIA) — A "nationwide issue" with Border Force e-gates that caused significant disruption at airports across the UK has been resolved, the Home Office has confirmed.

Airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Manchester were impacted by the failure on Tuesday evening.

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

A UK Home Office spokesperson said in a statement early on Wednesday: "eGates at UK airports came back online shortly after midnight.

"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."

The spokesperson apologised to travellers caught up in disruption.

E-gates are automated border gates that use facial recognition to check the identity of a person in order to let them enter the UK without talking to a Border Force officer.

According to the UK government's website, there are 270 of them in total at 15 air and rail ports in the UK.

They were designed to "enable quicker travel into the UK."

The disruption came after Border Force workers staged a four-day strike at Heathrow in a dispute over working conditions last week.

The union said the workers were protesting against plans to introduce new rosters they claim will see around 250 of them forced out of their jobs at passport control.