Thousands of homes in Kent are this morning without water because of a failure at a water treatment works. South East Water (SEW) said the 'instrument failure' in Tunbridge Wells yesterday morning caused a shutdown 'for a brief period'. It left people scrambling to water stations set up at a Tesco store and rugby club in the town last night and this morning. The water firm said today that around 7,000 properties have been affected, with people waking up to either their taps running dry, low pressure, or intermittent supply. According to SEW, water supplies may not return until Sunday evening at the earliest as storage tanks need to be replenished to a higher level to ensure a continuous and stable supply.The company apologised to those impacted.SEW incident manager Robert Anthony-Scorse said: 'An earlier instrument failure at our water treatment works in the Tunbridge Wells area caused the site to shut down for a short period this morning.'The site has managed to run uninterrupted this afternoon. However this, along with several days of high demand for drinking water, has impacted levels in our local drinking water storage tanks.'This means we're unable to pump water to customers, particularly those on higher ground.'