Southern Water has been fined £4,500 after sewage from its treatment works swamped gardens and a boating lake.

Sewage threatened to flood homes and drowned prize-winning chickens when a pump broke at the East Worthing water treatment works, near Brooklands leisure park, on January 3 last year, a court heard.

The company was fined and ordered to pay £1,915.24 costs to the Environment Agency yesterday after admitting preventing the escape of waste at the station.

Worthing Magistrates' Court heard how the discharge was caused by a random power surge which damaged an electrical pump.

Alarms went off but the stand-by operator went to deal with another incident at the Portobello works in Brighton, leaving sewage discharging for more than two hours in East Worthing.

Chairman of the bench Helena Hall said the company's procedures were not up to scratch.

She said: "In this incident the degree of culpability is high because we consider a different stand-by system should have been in place.

"The employee should have been alert to the degree of urgency."

She said although the sewage did not get inside residents' homes, it was still distressing.

She added: "While we note this is the first incident at this station, it is not the first offence by Southern Water Services."

Defence solicitor Fiona Chantery told the court: "The company is mortified that it happened."

She described how the alarm went off at the same time as one at the Portobello works, where the operator went first.

Miss Chantery said: "The correct procedure was to call for back-up."

She said he forgot to call for help until two hours later, by which time the sewage had contaminated an area of 20,000 cubic metres.

She said it happened during a period of heavy rainfall when staff were having to prioritise urgent call-outs.

A clean-up operation was launched.

Gardens in Seamill Park Avenue and Seamill Park Crescent were disinfected and residents were paid compensation Samuel Cogram, 70, and his wife Mary, 68, had their chicken coops rebuilt by the company after four of their pedigree chickens drowned in the sewage.

The couple managed to rescue their six goats, two barn owls, two dogs and a goose from the garden of their Seamill Park Crescent home.

Wastewater seeped into the nearby Teville Stream, which feeds into Brooklands Lake, but no lasting damage was caused, the court heard.

Miss Chantery said the leak was "a freak incident", the first in the 100 year history of the East Worthing Works, which should not happen again.

She said Southern Water had invested millions of pounds in ongoing water treatment improvements at Worthing.