A water outage at an East Lancashire hospital this morning resulted in patient being left for "hours" without drinking water.

United Utilities said it was called to Royal Blackburn Hospital earlier today to help restore the freshwater supply.

Families of patients have claimed their loved ones were left "for hours" without drinking water, as bottled water was not made available during the outage.

United Utilities said the problem was found and solved within an hour and the water supply to the hospital is back to normal.

A United Utilities spokesperson said: “Our teams were called to reports of no water at Royal Blackburn Hospital this morning.

"They were on site within an hour and quickly identified an issue on the hospital’s own network and helped to restore supplies for them.” 

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Royal Blackburn Hospital, has been contacted for comment.