Diana's fountain runs dry

The Princess Diana fountain suffered its second embarrassing closure today - one week after it was opened by the Queen.

On the day after last week's official inauguration, the £3.6million fountain had to be closed after it flooded the surrounding grass.

But today the Hyde Park fountain held no water at all after engineers emptied it for repairs. Officials insisted the work was routine maintenance but admitted they were also looking at a "glitch" in one of the motors. Last week's flood was caused by the fountain becoming blocked by leaves after the heavy summer storms. A spokesman for the Royal Parks said then: "We didn't expect autumn to arrive on the seventh of July."

A parks spokesman said today that filters were being installed to prevent such blockages. He admitted one of the water pumps "may not be working quite properly" but claimed: "It is just a small glitch."

An engineer working on the fountain said: "It may be that we have to turn it off every week to service it." Her colleague added: "We hope to have it back on later today but I wouldn't bet on it."