Emergency work overnight as thousands without water

A burst pipe in isolated woodland has impacted supplies since Thursday but Southern Water said there was "good progress" on fixing the issue.

The water company said disruption was expected to continue over the weekend and apologised to customers in St Leonards, Hastings and rural areas around Westfield.

Stuart Ledger, its chief financial officer, told BBC Radio Sussex that, if everything went to plan, he hoped all homes would have water again on Sunday.

He said this was likely to be later in the day but that the replaced pipe was now feeding water back to the treatment works.

Mr Ledger added: “This is by far probably one of the most difficult interruptions to supply I've seen from right from the start to the end.

“The difficulty now is making sure that, as we push water back into the network, no air locks or anything else occur that then cause issues.”

Repeating the company's apology to customers, he said work was being done to get water to 6,000 people on a priority service register.

Southern Water said bottled water stations at Tesco, Asda and Sea Road had all reopened by 09:30 BST on Saturday.

A fourth water station opened at Hastings Academy, in Rye Road, the company confirmed at 10:50.

Customers were advised to be aware of traffic when travelling to the water stations.

The burst pipe in Keeper's Wood, near the A21, needed to be removed and replaced.

Falling on the bank holiday weekend, the outage will impact events such as the annual four-day Jack in the Green Festival and the May Day Bike Run, which usually see thousands of people visit Hastings.

Hastings Borough Council said it was working with Southern Water and other agencies to help manage the situation and to ensure vulnerable people were looked after.

In a statement, it said: “We also anticipate that some services, including public toilets may be impacted. We will update as soon as we know more about how the situation is developing."

The organisers of the Jack in the Green event said: though the situation remained unchanged on Saturday morning, they hoped most events could "carry on as planned".

Refunds for a cancelled ceilidh event would be sent out via the White Rock Theatre, organisers said.

-bbc