Schools forced to close after water outage

Some schools in parts of Surrey have been forced to close after a water outage affecting the area.

Thames Water said it was investigating the problem affecting Thames Ditton, Esher, and Sunbury, plus other parts of the county and South West London.

Schools including Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School and Thames Ditton Infant School said on their websites they had been forced to close due to issues in the surrounding area which were first reported at about 05:15 BST.

A spokesperson for the water company apologised to customers, and said its engineers were doing everything they could to ensure water was back as soon as possible.

Jane Allen, a resident of West Molesey, said she was awoken by a text from her next door neighbour at about 07:30 alerting her to the outage.

"We have none at all, it didn't even trickle out a bit," she told BBC Radio Surrey.

She added: "I have six bottles of water in the house, which will be fine for drinking but we won't be able to do anything else.

"I think it will be awful. My next door neighbour's mother is 90, and it will be much worse for her than it will be for me."

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