Kent restaurant losing thousands as burst main leaves them with no water at 'busiest time of year'

• ITV Meridian's Joe Coshan has been speaking to businesses and residents affected by the water outage

The owners of an Indian restaurant in Medway in Kent says they've lost tens of thousands of pounds in cancelled bookings due to not having any water.

Around 800 homes have spent Christmas Eve either without water or with low pressure- because of a burst mains pipe, that Southern Water is still struggling to fix 36 hours after it was first reported.

Water tankers have been brought in which are pumping water back into the system on Frindsbury Road.

They've pumped 350,000 litres back in since this morning.

As well as homes in Rochester and Strood, businesses are also affected.

Ravi Gill who runs the Bas Bar in Rochester says they had bookings for more than 50 customers yesterday which had to be cancelled as the restaurant is without water or working toilets.

Speaking to ITV Meridian Mr Gill said: "Today I have more bookings, like around 80 to 90 people - but they can't come in, so we are going to close.

"We opened at 12 o'clock today, but we thought there was going to be water coming in, but no, so we can't cook the food.

"We are only a restaurant, so that's hard for us, you know.

"This is the busiest time for every restaurant, every pub, so we lost lots of money.

"We need a compensation, but they can't do anything, but the thing is we lost lots of money."

• Ravi Gill, restaurant manager

Sukhwinder Singh runs a fish and chip shop in Medway and has struggled to stay open.

He said without water, they can't continue to operate properly.

"I need to wash the potatoes, wash the dishes, things like that.

"So after I waited until 12, 1 o'clock, there was nothing else I could, so I went to try and get water and for friends and family and for the business in the shop.

"This is the busiest time for us as a business."

• Sukhwinder Singh, runs fish and chip shop

Local resident Shila Jassal added: "We keep being promised it's going to get sorted out, and then we're into the next day now, Christmas Eve, and the water situation still hasn't been sorted out.

"My main concern are the vulnerable, the people who haven't been able to speak up and say, 'I need more water', people who've got disabilities, who aren't able to come out of the house, who aren't very good at using social media to let us know.

"I'm worried about the elderly, of course, because if people have got central heating, they can't put the central heating on - there's not enough water for that.

"I'm worried about all those people who just can't get down to the shops, as the shops will be closed tomorrow.

"We have to trust that we're going to get the water when they say we are, and it never comes on time.

• Shila Jassal

Southern Water has told ITV Meridian that they have still be unable to locate the leak still which is causing the outage.

But teams are redirecting water to the network and pumping water into the network from tankers to try and increase pressure and restore water to more customers.

Stephanie Davidovitz from Southern Water said: "We've got of two teams of people, one team trying to find the problem and fix the problem, and our other team of operational colleagues are looking at how we can bring customers back into supply through rerouting water through different areas of the network.

"Regardless of whether we can fix the problem today or not, we are hopeful that we will find alternative ways to provide mainside water to these customers.

• Stephanie Davidovitz, Southern Water

"We are also bringing a number of tankers into the area, so we have four extra tankers on route. We already have a couple of tankers in the area, so whatever means necessary, we are looking at how we can supply those customers with water.

"Based on the fact that we've not had any reports that there is water flowing anywhere, we believe that this problem is underground, and therefore it is quite difficult for us to try and narrow down exactly where the problem is.

"Once we know exactly where the problem is, we can obviously box that in and start to fix the problem, but until we've narrowed down that search even further, we are in this predicament where we've got a number of people out there trying to find the problem.

"I can only apologise.

"It's not great for this sort of thing to happen at any time of the year, but particularly not today.

"My focus as sort of Head of Water Network here is just ensuring that we are focusing on the fix and getting customers back into supply."

The bottled water station at the Keystone Medical Centre in Rochester will be open until 10pm on Christmas Eve and will reopen at 8am on Christmas Day morning.

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