Utilities giant Anglian Water is compensating the owners of more than 3,000 Ipswich properties after their supplies were cut by Storm Babet in October.

Letters offering the compensation were sent to homes across the north west of the town at the start of December.

But there has been some confusion with householders finding their neighbours have been offered compensation when they have not, even though their water comes through the same mains pipe.

A spokeswoman for Anglian Water said a formula approved by the regulator Ofwat had been applied when offering compensation.

This says compensation should be paid when water pressure falls below a certain level - but because some water supplies had returned overnight some households that were not strictly entitled to it had been included in the compensation.

She said:  “During Storm Babet back in October, customers in Ipswich may have had low pressure or no water for a long period of time after one of our water treatment works was flooded by the heavy rain.

"We’d like to apologise again for the disruption during this time and thank our customers for their patience whilst we got things back up and running.

“We work closely with our regulators to make sure we’re consistent about when and why we offer compensation when issues like this occur.

"To do this, we look at all the data for our monitors to work out who was affected and for how long.

"We have credited customers that qualify already, but we have also noted that some customers’ water did come back through the night – when many people were likely asleep – and we appreciate that this wasn’t very helpful.

"As such, we are crediting those customers with a goodwill payment which should be with customers at the end of this week.”

During Storm Babet on October 20, the Anglian Water pumping station on the River Gipping near Sproughton was flooded and supplies were lost to many parts of north west Ipswich.

Some had water running again by the end of the day - but thousands of homes were left without water until the following day despite the area being lashed by heavy rain.

The compensation scheme as proved frustrating for some customers - last week residents of All Saints Road questioned why they had not received any payment for losing their water while households in neighbouring streets had.