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East Renfrewshire homes left without water on Christmas Day

BBC Scottish Water van at Williamwood High SchoolBBC
Scottish Water set up a bottled water collection point at Williamwood High School

Thousands of homes in East Renfrewshire were hit by water supply issues on Christmas Day, with some still cut off on Boxing Day.

Scottish Water said the issue was caused by an "operational issue" at Picketlaw Water Treatment Works.

The fault was fixed within hours but people in Newton Mearns, Giffnock, Thornliebank and Clarkston may still have had limited supply on Boxing Day.

Bottled water collection points were set up for affected households.

All affected customers have now had their supply fully restored, Scottish Water said.

Scottish Water said the initial fault, which affected about 5,000 properties, was repaired in the evening of Christmas Day.

However, a "flow restriction" at an outlet from a distribution tank meant some homes were continuing to experience poor pressure, discolouration or a loss of supply on Boxing Day.

A Scottish Water spokeswoman said: "We apologise to customers who were impacted by this issue and we thank them for your patience and understanding and appreciate this occurred during the festive holiday season.

"Our teams worked round the clock from Christmas Day until 27 December to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and can inform customers that this issue is now resolved with households and businesses back in supply.

"We will continue to monitor the performance of the water treatment works and the network over the coming days."

Bottled water will remain available at Williamwood High School in Clarkston and St Clares Primary School in Newton Mearns while supplies to the area are monitored.

Bottled water collection point at Williamwood High School
The bottled water collection point at Williamwood High School ran out of water at one point on Boxing Day

One resident in Newton Mearns told BBC Scotland he was cut off from the water supply at about 19:30 on Christmas Day. His water was still off at 11:00 the following day.

He said: "We've got five people in the household and the more inconvenient thing about it was just not being able to get kids' teeth brushed after they've been eating chocolate all day, not being able to have a shower before you go to bed and obviously not being able to flush the toilet.

"Nobody can have a shower, there's no drinking water from the tap and nobody can use the toilets.

"I'm sure that may be having quite an impact on any local restaurants, businesses."