Water supply has been restored to homes after a fault at a Southern Water site.

Some residents in West Sussex endured three days without water after a water works was forced to shut down due to a failure late on Saturday night.

As many as 40,000 homes in Horsham, Billingshurst, Pulborough, Rudgwick, Barns Green and Slinfold were left without water over the weekend due to the fault, caused by “unusually low levels of chlorine”.

While Southern Water had worked to restore supply on Monday morning, the water firm said the large area affected by the outage and the “cautious approach” needed to fix the fault caused the restoration of supply to take “longer than expected”.

Delays forced seven schools in West Sussex to close due to a lack of water supply yesterday.

Southern Water confirmed that the remaining 1,800 customers who were without water had their service restored overnight.

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A spokesman for the company said that some homes may still have low water pressure but that this should be rectified later this morning.

He said: “The network is complex and covers some large rural areas. This could mean that a small number of customers might still experience some low pressure or intermittent supply, but this should stabilise during the morning.”

The company is continuing deliveries of bottled water to its most vulnerable customers “as a precaution” and a bottled water station has reopened at the Horsham Park and Ride in Worthing Road.

Southern Water said it had “worked 24/7 to get customers back into supply as quickly as possible” and apologised for the impact the outage had caused.

Customers have been told to expect discoloured water from taps when supply is restored, which should be temporary and will disappear over time.

Residents have also been told that air locks may occur in pipes as a result of the incident, which should clear after running taps for a short period.

Vulnerable customers who need access to bottled water as a priority can call Southern Water on 0330 303 0368.