THAMES Water has issued an apology to customers after thousands of homes were left without water over the weekend.

The water company reported a fault at the Tilehurst pumping station on Saturday afternoon, but many houses did not have running hot water until Sunday evening.

Bottled water was made available at Castle Vets Pet Healthcare Centre car park, as technicians battled to resolve the problem.

A spokesman for Thames Water said: "We are sorry to customers impacted by no water or low water pressure over the weekend.

"We believe the vast majority of water supplies have now returned to normal after problems with the network over the weekend.

"Water pressures have improved across the Reading area and we are therefore hopeful that most of our customers have had their water supply returned to normal.

"We are aware that some customers maybe still experiencing low water pressure or no water during this morning. We have technicians on site investigating this.

"After restoring water supply some customers may experience an airlock. Running the cold kitchen tap for three minutes should clear the airlock.

"If this has not fixed the problem then residents should contact us and we’ll send an engineer to investigate.

"We will continue to have teams of technicians working across the day to monitor water pressure and we have put in contingency plans, including measures to ensure all schools have sufficient water supply."

We'll keep monitoring water pressure in the network, but believe supplies in #RdgUK are now back to normal. Update from Calcot below pic.twitter.com/AnHUahQRHc

— Thames Water (@thameswater) September 11, 2017

A separate issue was reported on Saturday afternoon, when a pressure reducing valve caused a reduction in pressure and no water in some cases.

Homes in Whitley, Woodley and Earley were among those hit by low pressure, although the problem was resolved at around 6pm the same day.