Anglian Water started repair work yesterday in Defoe Road, Whitton after a long section of sewer became blocked with cement being used in building work at a house on the street.

Antony Innes, from Anglian Water, said: “We are very sorry for the disruption that this work is going to cause to people in the local area.

“We were alerted to this problem on Friday and since then we have been using tankers to take sewage away from the 200 or so properties served by this sewer.

“This sewage will now instead be pumped through an over land pipe into a manhole further along the sewer.

“We have used the couple of days since to work with the council and the highways authority to plan these works so disruption can be minimised.

“Unfortunately, at this stage we cannot be sure how long this repair work will take.

“The sewer runs between four and five metres deep, making it very hard to predict the extent of the damage until our engineers are able to dig down and see what we are dealing with.

“This is clearly not an ideal situation for our customers or road users.

“However this is an exceptional and unfortunate set of circumstances and we need to repair the damage as quickly as possible. We will be working hard to complete work as fast as we can with the minimum fuss.”