Pupils have been sent home early after a school was left with no running water today.

Maidstone Grammar School took the action at 12.15pm after it was left with no toilet flushing or washing facilities for students or staff.

South East Water started work to flush pipes around Maidstone this morning, including in Barton Road, where the school is based.

Today is the first day back for students at the grammar school, after last week's half term break.

In an e-mail to parents, the school's head Mark Tomkins said he expected the school to reopen tomorrow.

Mr Tomkins added: "Any student unable to make their way home will remain in school and senior staff will supervise or arrange for school minibus drivers to take them home."

South East Water confirmed it received several calls about properties not having water, but said taps should have started working again shortly after.

Maidstone Grammar said it was shutting to allow its water tanks to refill after the disruption.

South East Water's regional network manager Jenny Rhodes said: "We were carrying out routine maintenance on our network in the ME15 postcode sector this morning when some customers reported having no water.

"As soon as we knew there was a problem, we stopped the work and water supplies should have returned to our customers almost immediately.

"The work we were carrying out is known as flushing, which is where high pressure water is pumped through the pipes to clear the naturally-occurring deposits. We need to clear these as they can sometimes cause water discolouration.

"We plan this work carefully and normally it is carried out without any impact for our customers."

"However, sometimes there can be unexpected issues and we will be investigating what happened in this instance."