Students had to evacuate their £180 a week accommodation block in the city centre when water started coming through their ceilings on Thursday evening.

At around 10pm on Thursday 19 April University of Sheffield students living in the iQ building, Allen Court, in St George’s Close, discovered alarming amounts of water pouring out of a ceiling light.

Fatima Chaudhry, a student living on the block’s second floor, said: “It was really scary. No one was telling us what was happening so we didn’t know if it was safe to stay in the building or not.”

The flood came just days after students received an email from the property owners regarding ‘fluctuations in water pressure’ upon students’ return from their Easter break, caused by ‘small amounts of air in the system when it hasn’t been used for a while’.

The water quickly started to run down the apartment block’s lift, making all six floors of the block start to flood. Though the damage was concentrated to the corridors and stairwells.

Students located on the sixth floor reported hearing ‘banging coming from the ceiling’ in the days leading up to the flood.

Jessie Huang, a resident in the building, said: “Water started gushing from the lift and the lights, none of us knew if the electricity was safe to use or if there would be some sort of fault. It was scary.”

The sixth floor faced the worst of the damage, many of the students living there were reallocated into vacant rooms elsewhere in the complex for the night.

Students on other floors were allowed to remain in the block overnight, however, they reported the water supply was cut off until the next morning.

Ben Ashworth, who lives on the second floor, said: “It was quite annoying, we couldn’t have showers or anything and we weren’t offered any solution. They didn’t even tell us when the water would be back on.”

Accommodation company iQ has been contacted for a comment but has not yet replied.