People in parts of Hawkes Bay are being asked to boil their drinking water this morning.

The Central Hawke's Bay District Council says a sample from the Porangahau and Te Paerahi area is below the safe standard for E. coli.

Mayor Alex Walker says there haven't been any water issues, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

"We had a staff member that collected fresh samples late on Friday night and actually drove them to Wellington very early Saturday morning to make sure we could get lab testing done as quickly as possible."

The next set of test results are due back in a few days.