A water company is hunting leads on burst pipes by deploying Britain's first sniffer dog trained to hound down water leaks.

Snipe, a 16-month-old cocker spaniel, has undergone weeks of training by ex-military personnel to detect problem pipes by sniffing out tiny amounts of chlorine in tap water.

The dog has now been recruited by United Utilities (UU), who supply around three million homes in the North West of England, in a UK first for dog leak detection.

Snipe will be used in trials to assess if his sniffing skills can pinpoint water being wasted in rural areas where leaks are hard to detect.