A petition calling for a second EU referendum has crashed the House of Commons website after it was overwhelmed by traffic.

An online campaign for a second vote caused the House of Commons petitions website to go down after it experienced more users than it ever had before.

The petition passed the 280,000 mark on Friday evening, with a map of the voting indicating that most activity was in London - where most boroughs backed Remain in the referendum.

A House of Commons spokeswoman said: "The site was temporarily down due to exceptionally high volumes of simultaneous users on a single petition, significantly higher than on any previous occasion.

"UK Parliament and the government digital service are aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve the problems as quickly as possible."

The page, set up by William Oliver Healey, reads: "We the undersigned call upon HM Government to implement a rule that if the Remain or Leave vote is less than 60% based on a turnout less than 75%, there should be another referendum."

If a petition receives more than 100,000 signatures, they will be considered for debate in Parliament.

The petitions committee considers all petitions that have received 100,000 signatures by Friday afternoon at its subsequent meeting.

The next meeting is on Tuesday June 28, where the committee has the power to schedule petitions for debate in Westminster Hall on a Monday from 4.30pm, for up to three hours.

You can follow the petition's progress here.