Severn Trent Water has said a "huge sorry" after thousands of consumers in Gloucestershire were left without water today.

A burst main at Severn Ham left around 10,000 homes and businesses high and dry and schools had to close.

Thousands of extra bottles of drinking water were rushed to the town.

A spokesman for Severn Trent Water said: "We want to say a huge sorry to anyone in Tewkesbury who is still without water or who has poor pressure. We're doing everything we can to get things back to normal, and our teams have been working through the night.

"We have teams out on the ground working to track down the problem and get it fixed as quickly as they can. We've been using drones to find where the burst is and we've even have a helicopter out. We're happy to say that we've now found the burst pipe, so we can now get on with digging it out and getting it fixed."

He added: "We know how difficult it is to have no water, and we're really sorry for the inconvenience this will be causing.

"We are providing bottled water for customers to collect at Morrisons, Barton Road, Tewkesbury. There has been an initial delivery of water, and more has now arrived. We'll be on site until 10pm.

"We've now opened a second bottled water handout site at Tewkesbury School, Ashchurch Rd, Tewkesbury.

"We'd like to reassure our customers that at the same time as fixing the burst pipe, we're doing everything we can to get the water supplies back on as soon as we can.

"We're moving water around our network of pipes and we're also bringing water into the area using our fleet of tankers. We're also working to deliver bottled water to our most vulnerable customers in the affected areas.

"As a result of the water supply issues several schools have had to close today, we know how inconvenient this is and we're really sorry for the disruption that's been caused."