Queues have spilled onto the A4 at the Shell petrol station in Maidenhead this morning as the Government tried to dissuade panic buying.

BP was forced to close down a handful of its forecourts on Thursday due to a lack of available fuel.

A ‘small number’ of Tesco Alliance petrol forecourts have also been impacted, according to ExxonMobil, which runs the sites.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Friday that motorists should “carry on as normal”.

“As of last night, five petrol stations on the BP network out of 12 or 13 hundred were affected,” he said.

“I’m meeting this morning with Tesco and I’m sure they’ll give me the update for themselves.

“None of the other retailers said they had any closures.”

He added: “The others, Asda, Morrisons and other supermarkets, are saying they have no problems, as have other petrol companies.”

But at a meeting a week ago BP reportedly told the Government that the company was struggling to get fuel to its forecourts.

Its head of UK retail Hanna Hofer described the situation as “bad, very bad”, according to a report by ITV News.

BP had “two-thirds of normal forecourt stock levels required for smooth operations”, she said, adding that the level is “declining rapidly”.

On Thursday Rod McKenzie of the Road Haulage Association trade body said that the Government had allowed the driver shortage to get “gradually worse” in recent months.

“We have got a shortage of 100,000 (drivers),” he told BBC’s Newsnight.

“When you think that everything we get in Britain comes on the back of a lorry, whether it’s fuel or food or clothes or whatever it is, at some point, if there are no drivers to drive those trucks, the trucks aren’t moving and we’re not getting our stuff.”

He added: “I don’t think we are talking about absolutely no fuel or food or anything like that, people shouldn’t panic buy food or fuel or anything else, that’s not what this is about.

“This is about stock outs, it’s about shortages, it’s about a normal supply chain being disrupted.”