Elderly people and young families in a large block of flats have been left without water three times since the middle of December.

The supply to 43 homes in Regents Court, Haggerston, was cut off for five days in December and twice during February - with one elderly resident forced to carry a bucket of water from a nearby canal to flush his toilet.

Christine Shine, who lives in Regents Court, said the first supply problem was on the night of December 17, 2022 - lasting until December 22.

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Since then, the water has been cut off twice, for more than 24 hours both times.

Christine said: "In a way it didn’t affect me personally because my mum lives across the road from me.

"So, I was able to go to my mum for a bath, I was able to get drinking water and all that sort of stuff but we have got no in-between in our block.

"Our block is a vulnerable block. It’s filled pretty much with the older generations that have been there for years, since the building was put up, and young women with young children."

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Christine added that one resident in his 70s had to take a bucket to the canal to get water to flush his toilet during one of the outages because deliveries of water were not adequate.

Christine believes the first disruption was the responsibility of water company Thames Water and the second two of the council.

Thames Water accepts responsibility for December's problem, and also said the other two occasions were the responsibility of the property owners, Hackney Council.

Christine claimed however that during the first disruption, bottled water was handed out to residents by Hackney Council, not Thames Water.

She said during the second and third incidents, bottled water was not provided at all.

A Thames Water spokesperson said: "We're sorry to residents of Regents Court in Hackney who have experienced issues with their water supply in recent months.

"We were first made aware of this on December 17.

"Following these reports, we found a leak on our network, which was repaired on December 19 and the water supply was restored.

"Since the repair, we received reports of water outages on February 11 and 23.

"On both occasions our engineers attended the same day and found the issue was internal and not the responsibility of Thames Water. 

"We’d like to remind customers, should they have a water supply issue to report this to us either via our contact centre or online channels, and we will arrange for an investigation to take place."

The Hackney Gazette has contacted Hackney Council for comment.