Thousands of homes are left without water and schools forced to close amid burst Thames Water pipe across Surrey and London

Thousands of families have been plunged into chaos after a Thames Water pipe burst, leaving schools closed and homes without running water.The burst main began leaking 750 litres a second in Molesey, Surrey, draining the much needed supply from 15,000 properties. Households across seven boroughs in London and Surrey were left with no water supply or low pressure.Thames Water apologised and said a specialist team was on site to urgently fix the leak.Schools and nurseries across the region were forced to close because of the fault. Neilson Recreation Ground in southwest London also flooded amid the burst main in Molesey.Meanwhile, supermarket shelves ran empty as residents scrambled to stock up on bottled water.Thames Water said it would open a bottled water station for residents in Molesey following the leak.The flooded Nielsen Recreation Ground in Molesey, Surrey, next to Island Barn Reservoir, after a water main burst Thames Water engineers next to a flooded Nielsen Recreation Ground in MoleseyAt around 6pm, around 5,500 properties were still being affected by the water outage.Esher Sixth Form College, in Thames Ditton, Surrey, said on its website: 'Due to a major water outage affecting the KT10 area and our campus, the College is now closed on Monday, September 28.'Students and staff must return home, or stay at home until further communications via Teams.'The Holy Cross School in New Malden, south London, said: 'Due to a local water supply issue affecting the school site this morning, we have taken the decision to close the school today.'Thames Ditton Infant School and Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School, Surrey, also said they were shut for the day because of the issue.Last month, Prime Minister Andy Burnham shelved plans to put the struggling water company into administration due to the eye-watering costs.The water company, which is Britain's biggest and oversees 3.9 million customers, is £19.5billion in debt, with creditors in the process of trying to arrange a bailout deal after ministers recently rejected the latest proposal.On average, the firm loses 569million litres of water per day due to leaks across its network – down from 654million litres per day 10 years ago.And a hosepipe ban for millions of households is still in effect, leading some locals to launch a campaign to boycott the water company.Monica Harding, MP for Esher and Walton, Surrey, said: 'We need an urgent response from Thames Water to get water supplies back on as soon as possible and to protect vulnerable communities.'Once the water is flowing again, we need to establish exactly what happened and why.'My worry is that decades of underinvestment in our infrastructure and poor regulation may be causing incidents like this.'Right now, however, the priority must be getting water back in our taps.'The MP said she was 'pushing for an urgent response' as her constituency was affected by the issue.Paul Kohler, MP for Wimbledon, south London, said he had reached out to Thames Water after reports of a water outage across Wimbledon, New Malden, Raynes Park and Morden, in south London.Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the difficulties faced by households were 'yet another example' of the water firm failing its customers.'Thames Water is already the worst water company in England and Wales for leaky pipes – losing an average of 592 million litres every single day,' he said.'Meanwhile, 28 per cent of customers' bills goes straight to servicing the company's debt, not fixing the crumbling infrastructure that is now failing them.'The final whistle needs to be blown on Thames Water, and Burnham needs to get a grip.' Empty water bottle shelves at a supermarket in Molesey as tap water ran dry in thousands of homes Nielsen Recreation Ground in Molesey, Surrey, next to Island Barn Reservoir Residents described a rude awakening before starting school or work on Monday morning and discovering no water coming from their showers and baths.'We have no running water,' one user said on social media, adding: 'I just want a shower and a cup of tea. Thames Water want their bonuses.'Another said the outage was 'having a huge impact already'.A Thames Water spokesperson said: 'Our engineers are making progress on repairing the burst in Molesey but it is likely to take some time to complete.'We are rerouting water in the area to reduce the impact on customers while we work to fix the burst.'Customers in Surbiton should be seeing their supply return although the pressure may be lower than usual.'Water deliveries are being made to customers who are on our priority services register.'We will be opening bottled water stations this afternoon and will provide their locations once confirmed.'We believe up to 15,000 properties were affected this morning and that has now been reduced to 6,000.'We again would like to say sorry to our customers and reassure those who are still affected that we are working to restore their water supply as quickly as possible.'The spokesperson said further updates would be posted on the company's website.