A council is advising people not to enter the sea along a stretch of Kent coast after a leak from a sewage treatment works.

Canterbury City Council issued the advice today for the coast between Tankerton and Studd Hill, which is around three miles.

Southern Water said they had fixed the leak and begun a clean-up operation.

The council's advisory came in a tweet saying: "We're advising people not to enter the sea from Tankerton to Studd Hill this weekend following a pollution incident involving the Southern Water Brook Road combined sewer overflow in Swalecliffe which took place from 3.03pm to 7.19pm yesterday."

Southern Water said in a statement: "A system fault at our Brook Road Swalecliffe Wastewater Pumping Station has resulted in wastewater leaving our Brook Pumping station and entering a nearby brook.

"Our specialist teams are on site, the failure has been identified and a fix has being carried out. The site is now running as normal. We have notified the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Local Authority and will continue to work with them and our regulators in the coming days to assess and mitigate against impact to the environment.

"Our teams were on site at first light to carry out beach walks at Herne Bay, Tankerton and West Beach. Minimal signs of any waste were found. A full clean-up is under way along the affected stretch of brook and we will undertake any work that is necessary."

The company added that: "No pollution is acceptable to us and we believe it is important that our customers are always fully informed."

It later also confirmed that following the electrical fault, they had carried out regular monitoring and sampling of the entire water course from pumping station all the way to the sea and he latest samples from the brook confirm that the water quality was normal.

It added: "We will continue to maintain extra specialist resources at the site."

The leak comes a few weeks after the company was fined a record amount for long term sewage leaks.

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