Customers of Barclays Bank in the south of England were prevented from withdrawing cash from around half of the bank's ATM network in the region due to computer problems over the bank holiday weekend.

Approximately 1,500 cash machines were out of order due to what the bank described as IT hardware problems. Barclays said the machines are now working again and that the problem was nothing to do with the changeover to British Summer Time on Saturday night, which was widely speculated as being a possible cause for the glitch.

The IT problems also prevented millions of Barclay’s customers from accessing the bank’s telephone and Internet services. Barclays said that the ATM problem was rectified by 4pm on Easter Sunday, but Internet problems continued for longer.

Despite the widespread system problem, customers using Barclay debit and credit card products in stores were not affected.