Households are still suffering from low water pressure - and sometimes no water at all - after an incident that affected a water treatment plant two weeks ago was complicated by flooding at another plant.

A power failure at Bewl at the start of the month damaged equipment and initially affected water supplies to 8,000 homes across a large area of the Weald.

Some businesses and schools had to close, and water bottle stations were set up, with residents in Goudhurst, Wadhurst, Lamberhurst, Matfield, Kilndown, Hawkhurst, Sandhurst, and Northiam afffected.

Most have since had supply fully restored but not all. Homes in Tunbridge Wells are still having problems.

Douglas Whitfield, the operations director at South East Water, said: “We are sorry to our customers in Tunbridge Wells and the surrounding areas who have been experiencing periods of low pressure or even no water during the past few days.

"Following the shut-down of our Bewl Water Treatment Works, which caused a number of our drinking water storage tanks in the area and hundreds of miles of pipes to run dry, we’ve been working to restore the amount of treated drinking water held in our storage tanks and wider network to normal levels.

“Unfortunately this work has been hampered by two months’ worth of rain falling this month alone, resulting in flooding at our water treatment works in Tonbridge and Groombridge."

He said: “While we have flood defences in place, these defences have been breached preventing the treatment works from operating, resulting in less water being available in the network than we would like.

“Our teams are working around the clock to move the water we have around the network, restart the sites and restore supplies.

“During this time we urge customers to be mindful with the amount of water they’re using, while we work to restore drinking water capacity in the network.”

Alexander Oram is one unhappy customer in Tunbridge Wells. He said: "We've been suffering from low water pressure for a week. It's usually in the evenings.

"But now our patience is starting to wear thin, as on Tuesday we had no water at all!

"Are we turning into some Third World country with our critical infrastructure crumbling away?"