About 58,000 properties across Hampshire have been affected by an outage caused by a fault at a water supply works.

The problem, which started on Wednesday morning, has hit large parts of Southampton, Chandler’s Ford, Romsey, Totton, Waterside and the New Forest.

Nick Adams-King, the leader of Hampshire County Council, said Southern Water had confirmed the scale of the problem at a council briefing.

The firm apologised and said the disruption was likely to continue until the weekend.

The outage comes as households wait to hear about a rise in water charges on Thursday morning.

Ofwat, the water regulator, is expected to announce that charges will increase for those in England and Wales by more than 20% over the next five years.

Southern Water said the problem in Hampshire had been caused by a “technical issue” at its Testwood Water Supply Works, resulting in low pressure or a loss of water supply.

It added that bottled water stations were being set up and it was continuing to deliver them to customers on its priority list.

Stations have opened at Places Leisure Centre – formerly Fleming Park – in Passfield Avenue, Eastleigh, and the Lordshill Sainsburys in Southampton.

Southern Water said tankers were also pumping water directly into the network to help reduce the impact.

Three of them had been dedicated to Southampton General Hospital, which is also being affected.

The lack of water also caused more than 20 schools to shut, including North Baddesley Infant School and Halterworth in the Test Valley, and The New Forest Academy, Cadland Primary School and Wildground in the New Forest and Mountbatten school Romsey.

Southern Water said it had contacted all of them.

Mr Adams-King said the council had been told “an issue at Testwood Water Treatment Works led to an automated shutdown of the reservoir on Tuesday, December 17, due to water quality concerns”.

He added that:

• Approximately 73,000 properties are supplied by the affected reservoir
• 14,500 properties have been “re-zoned” by Southern Water
• 58,000 properties across Eastleigh, the New Forest and Southampton areas will be impacted by a loss of supply

Mr Adams-King said he was “grateful” for the firm’s speedy action, but called the disruption “damaging and unacceptable”.

“This is the second year in succession that there has been an issue with water supply in the run-up to Christmas,” he said.

“Coincidentally I and other local government leaders have a meeting tomorrow with Southern Water, I’m sure this will be at the forefront of our thinking and I will be asking for assurances that action is taken to ensure this does not happen again.”

A Defra spokesperson said the government was “aware of the water supply issues in Southampton and Marchwood”.

“We are in close contact with Southern Water to ensure that the company is taking urgent steps to support residents and resolve the issue as soon as possible.

“The government has just announced reforms to double the compensation water companies provide to customers for supply issues like these and from next year, further investment into water infrastructure will provide a much-needed upgrade to services.”