Water outage: Thousands of homes without water for fourth day

Thousands of properties in East Sussex remain without water after a burst pipe on Thursday impacted supplies.

Pressure on reservoirs as a result of the outage has added to supply issues, pushing the number of households without water on Sunday to 32,500.

The damaged pipe, in remote woodland, has been replaced and was feeding water back to the treatment works, Southern Water said on Saturday.

The water company has apologized again to customers and said it was “hopeful” supply would begin to return “gradually” over the course of Sunday.

Southern Water said it was doing everything it could “to minimize the number of customers affected.”

Residents and businesses in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings and in Westfield were told a treatment works at Beauport would be restarted overnight.

After “stringent quality tests” the water would then be released to customers, the company said.

Bottled water stations were due to open at 08:00 BST on Sunday.

Hour-long queues have been reported at water stations at Tesco, Asda, Sea Road and Hastings Academy.

Lesley Arshad, who is disabled, said she had been left off the company’s priority list for water delivery, despite receiving a letter confirming she was on it last year.

Another woman told how her mother, who lives in sheltered housing in St Leonards and uses a walking frame, had six bottles of water stolen after 12 were delivered to her flat.

Jakki Blackman, 49, told mum Christine Lawton, 72, “couldn’t get to a water station if she needed to.”

She added: “It’s heartbreaking because she’s upset and she gets panicked and anxious.”

Southern Water said: “We will continue to deliver bottled water throughout Sunday to customers on our priority services register.

“The bottled water stations are often the busiest first thing so we would encourage customers to consider coming later in the day if possible.

“We’re sorry for the continued impact this is having and are doing everything we can to restore supplies.”

East Sussex County Council’s Godfrey Daniel has warned of the “huge impact” the outage would have on businesses already struggling with the cost of living.