Southern Water has apologised after a burst sewer reportedly flooded a farmer’s field.

A sewer in a rural area near Bognor burst yesterday evening, with more than a dozen tankers at the scene in Yapton Road to help with the situation.

Reports on social media claimed that a farmer’s field was flooded with sewage due to the damaged pipe.

A spokesman for Southern Water said: “We’re dealing with a burst sewer in a rural area off the Yapton Road, north of Bognor.

“To protect the environment and allow customers to use their facilities as normal, we will have to use tankers to carry flows away for treatment.

“We may be using traffic management where there is a risk to pedestrians or traffic.

“We’re sorry for the noise and disruption this will cause.

“We are working as quickly as is safe to make repairs and will keep customers updated.”

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It comes just days after the water company was forced to apologise to thousands of customers after almost 40,000 homes across West Sussex were left without water due to a fault at one of their sites.

Some schools were forced to close on Monday due to the outage, with bottled water stations opening across the county for affected residents.