Hundreds of homes, a doctors surgery and a school in east Suffolk were left without water for much of Thursday after a water main burst.

Staff at Framlingham Medical Practice in Pembroke Road cancelled all face-to-face appointments with patients, along with all blood tests, leaving only phone appointments available due to the surgery having no water.

Meanwhile, Thomas Mills High School in Framlingham closed at 1pm on Thursday due to the lack of water and the Framlingham Sports Centre, based at Framlingham College in Saxtead Road, was also said to be without water.

READ MORE: Thomas Mills High School in Framlingham shut due to no water

People living in Halesworth, Dennington, Saxtead and Framlingham were affected by either low water pressure or no water at all after the main burst near water Essex and Suffolk Water's Walpole treatment works near Halesworth.

Engineers worked throughout the night from Wednesday into Thursday to repair the pipe, with the work only being completed at 3pm on Thursday, enabling supplies to be restored to homes over the proceeding hours.

Customers affected by the outage were able to obtain free bottled water from the Co-op store near Halesworth town centre.

READ MORE: Hundreds in Framlingham and Halesworth without water

Essex and Suffolk Water’s water director Kieran Ingram apologised to people in the area for the inconvenience.

He said: “Our teams have done a great job in difficult conditions to get the repair complete and anyone who has seen any issues with their water supply should start to see this return back to normal over the next few hours.

“In the meantime, we’re making bottled water available for those customers who might need it.

“We apologise to those customers affected for the impact this is having and understand the difficulties this can cause. We would like to thank customers for their patience while we resolve this.”