In Pictures: Two schools close and hundreds of homes left without water following burst water pipe in Polegate

A widescale water outage in East Sussex near Eastbourne has caused chaos across the area as hundreds of homes are left without water and schools have been forced to close on Thursday morning (July 6).

The outage, caused by a burst water pipe on Wannock Road in Polegate, happened on Wednesday evening (July 5), with South East Water called to the area to try and fix the burst.

As a result of water supply issues, two schools in Willingdon have been forced to announce emergency closures as they have no water supply. The schools closed so far are Willingdon Primary School and Willingdon Community School.

In a statement South East Water said: “We’re really sorry for those of you who are experiencing low water pressure at the moment.

"We’re currently working to fix a burst water main, but have managed to re-route some of the water in our network which means that customers should have their suppolies start to return soon.

"We can’t say how long the repairs will long this will take but rest assured we’re doing everything we can to get you back up and running as soon as possible.”

South East Water have also opened a bottled water station for their customers impacted by the current water outage. The station, which will provide free bottled water, is located at the Recreation Ground in Wannock Road, Polegate.

People have been asked to get here on foot where possible due to the location being difficult to reach via car.