A main that burst on a busy High Street has been forcing shoppers to avoid water running down the road.

Two workers from South East Water were on King Street, Maidstone, today to fix the leak, which is coming from a pipe just outside Lush.

South East Water could not confirm when the pipe burst, but had the area cordoned off on Friday as well.

Water is running down Gabriels Hill, meaning many shoppers are having to dodge it.

Ann Seach, South East Water’s distribution manager, said: "We are working as quickly as possible to repair the leak on our seven inch diameter water main in King Street.

"The cause of the burst is not known and may be due to a number of things, including the age of the pipe and ground conditions.

"Unfortunately emergencies like this do happen from time to time. We have 540 million litres of water a day being transported around 9,000 miles of underground pipeline.

"There are also six million joints which have to withstand high pressure 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Inevitably sometimes these pipes and connections fail unexpectedly, but we work around the clock to repair them as quickly as possible."