A widow living under the constant threat of flooding is a "nervous wreck" after hearing work to fix a broken drain near her home has been delayed.

Iris Lancaster's house and garden were badly flooded earlier this year because of a nearby cracked culvert.

It was the third time her property, situated in Kennington Road, Kennington, had flooded in a year.

Her daughter Wendy, who lives next door, was also hit.

Thames Water has known about the problem for more than three years and, in July, pledged to start repair work in October.

But the water company said it had been forced to delay the project for three months after carrying out further survey work.

Mrs Lancaster, 82, said: "My daughter has got to have new carpets and everything, but there's no point going ahead with all that if it's just going to happen again.

"We want peace of mind. You can't really settle down to do anything. It's very frustrating — we want to get everything cleared up."

The grandmother-of-two said every time it rained she felt like a nervous wreck and found it difficult to sleep at night.

She added: "I feel very nervous. Let's hope we don't have heavy snow or rain this winter."

Thames Water explained the cracked sewer ran directly under a garage built in the 1970s on property neighbouring Mrs Lancaster's.

Engineers looked at digging under the garage to carry out the repair work but could not guarantee the building would not collapse.

Spokesman Becky Johnson said: "The extension was directly over the sewer and, as a result, it's not possible for us to repair it — our only option is to move the sewer.

"We originally intended to demolish the garage, but that would have involved digging a large trench close to the house and our ground survey showed that would have put the house at an increased risk of structural damage."

Now the company plans to bypass the section of drain under the garage completely, with work likely to take three to four weeks to complete.

Ms Johnson said: "We will be speaking with residents about the new preferred route, which will inevitably cause delay to our original programme.

"We expect to undertake the work in January to avoid disruption over Christmas.

"We would like to assure residents we are making every effort to complete the work as quickly as possible and would like to apologise for any inconvenience experienced as a result of the delay."