An emergency centre for the ambulance service was forced to close due to having no water.

As temperatures hit upwards of 38 degrees, staff from the South East Coast Ambulance's control centre in Heath Road, Coxheath, were forced to relocate.

The site usually has up to 40 people working at any one time.

Staff were moved to the service's second site in Crawley, as well as to the 111 call centre in Ashford before returning this afternoon once the problem had been resolved.

This morning, an ambulance service spokesman said: "We have enacted well-rehearsed contingency plans to ensure we continue to deliver a service to patients including moving staff to our West EOC in Crawley and our 111 call centre in Ashford, Kent.

“We continue to be extremely busy. Please support us by continuing to only call 999 for serious or life-threatening emergencies as our staff work hard to respond to everyone who needs us as quickly as possible.

“We are working closely with our water supplier to ensure we can return to our normal working as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience and support.”

This afternoon, the spokesman added: "We are pleased to report the issue regarding the loss of water at our 999 control centre in Coxheath has been resolved.

"We are now in the process of returning to normal working with staff returning to and starting shifts from the centre this afternoon.

"We would like to thank our staff for their hard work and professionalism while this issue was resolved.

"We remain very busy this afternoon and we are working hard to reach everyone who needs us as quickly as possible.

"Please make use of all alternatives to calling 999, including NHS 111 Online if you are not facing a serious or life-threatening emergency."

Villages, including near Challock, have been left without water due to a high demand for it over the past few days, while a leak on the Isle of Sheppey was cut off for several days after two major leaks.

This has all happened while temperatures continued to rise to an unprecedented level and are expected to reach 40C today.

South East Water’s incident manager Richard Sands said: “We are experiencing extremely high levels of demand for water, pumping out more than 120 million litres of additional water to customer taps daily – the same as adding the equivalent of half of Kent onto our supply area.

“Unfortunately, due to this high demand coupled with a local power issue last night had an impact in the Coxheath area, where the South East Coast Ambulance’s centre is located.

“This issue has been resolved and we will keep SECAmb informed of the situation, and will be working with them on their contingency plans to provide further resilience in the future.”