A burst pipe in Hackney Central forced residents to go without water for six days.

The pipe on Amhurst Road burst on Tuesday evening (December 13) and water was not restored to affected households until Monday evening (December 19).

Nina Bacchus, a Hackney Central resident, said she had to “visit neighbours to get drinking water, washing up water and water for flushing the toilet” during the outage.

She added: “It’s been grim, and I know I'm better off than most.”

Residents said that they contacted Thames Water for assistance but received few updates or acknowledgement of their concerns during the six days.

Nina said that there seemed “to be little or no communication between the engineers fixing the issue and the staff put in the firing line to inform the public of what was going on”.

She added that she felt “desperate”, and couldn’t believe that the outage had gone on for nearly a week.

Before water was restored to residents, a Thames Water Spokesperson said: “We’re sorry to customers on Amhurst Road in Hackney who have no water or lower pressure than normal due to a burst pipe.”