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BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay has weighed in as thousands of people in Kent have been left without water. The TV star announced on the BBC show on Wednesday (December 3) that 24,000 households in the Tunbridge Wells area were waking up to a fifth day without water after an issue at a local treatment works. Talking to co-host Sally Nugent, he admitted: "It is a nightmare, isn't it?"

Jon explained: "Water supplies had been restored to 12,000 homes yesterday, but due to water quality, those customers are now back out of supply this morning. Businesses and schools have been forced to close, and South East Water has issued an apology."

BBC Breakfast then cut to the show's Simon Jones for a report on the situation.

"Anger, despair, disbelief, days without running water for thousands of South East Water customers, forced to come and pick up bottled water to try to get by," he said.

The segment included interviews with staff at a hotel and a care home, where the reporter said that "daily life has become a real struggle".

Jason Denny, manager of the Milward House care home, said: "We don't have working toilets, that's true, and we don't have working laundry as well, which is a concern. And it's certainly not a situation that's sustainable."

Meanwhile a hotel manager shared that it had cost the business thousands of pounds in lost trade.

Julian Leefe-Griffiths, manager of The Tunbridge Wells Hotel, said: "We had a lovely gentleman, he's got a seven day stay, American client, comes quite often, just got on the train this morning, said, 'I can't do it. I've had three days of no shower.' We're flushing loos with buckets that we carry up the stairs. It's completely unacceptable in a modern world, in a great hotel, to be able to operate like this.

"And that guy's just gone to London, he's taken his money somewhere else, and we're the people who suffer. And that's really unfair."

The problem has been blamed on a bad chemical batch at a treatment works.

BBC Breakfast airs on BBC One from 6am.