THE GREAT WATER FIASCO!
Families queue for bottles as taps run dry across country
WATER firms were accused last night of leaving customers ‘ high and dry’ by failing to prevent a surge of burst pipes.
Tens of thousands of families were left without water after parts of the mains network collapsed.
Ofwat, which regulates the industry, said some companies had fallen well short in planning for the icy ‘Beast from the East’. As the crisis continued:
Dozens of schools were closed because they had no water supply;
Jaguar Land Rover halted production to conserve supplies to homes and families;
Cadbury also shut down its Birmingham factory when its taps ran dry;
In London, customers queued for bottled water at emergency distribution centres;
Water bowsers were stationed at sites in the South-West, Wales and Manchester;
Suppliers repeated a call for customers to ration their consumption.
Rachel Fletcher, who heads Ofwat, said firms should have been prepared because the extreme weather had been forecast.
‘A number of water companies appear to have fallen well short on their forward planning and the quality of support and communication they’ve been providing, leaving some customers high and dry,’ she added.
‘Everyone’s number one priority must be getting the water flowing as quickly as possible and ensuring that all customers – in particular those in vulnerable circumstances – get the support they need.
‘When the taps are back on, we will take a long, hard look at what has happened here. We won’t hesitate to intervene if we find that companies have not had the right structures and mechanisms in place to be resilient.’
Customers of Britain’s biggest supplier, among already the being Thames worst investigated affected. Water, It were was by Ofwat over allegations it had not done enough to safeguard water supplies and tackle leaks.
A hospital in South London was so desperate that it asked the firm for 500 bottles of water for patients on Sunday. Twitter was full of complaints. One user said: ‘48 hours without a proper wash now and no clean shirts for work tomorrow! Worst customer services I have experienced in a long time!’ Another said: ‘ There’s no water in North London and Thames Water is handing out bottles like it’s a Third World country.’ Customers reported that bottled water stations set up in South London ran out of supplies. One tweeted: ‘Shocking. You ran out of water and my at elderly SW12 station father a is while among ago many waiting in a queue for another delivery.’ Severn Trent, which serves the Midlands and west of England, said it had seen a 4,000 per cent increase in burst pipe call-outs. In
an attempt to stop household taps running dry, it asked Jaguar Land Rover to halt production at its factory in Solihull.
Severn Trent said: ‘ Due to the recent thaw we’ve experienced, our teams are dealing with a huge number of burst pipes across our region which is putting pressure on our network. We’ve worked closely with Jaguar Land Rover which has agreed to stop production to help us target our supply.’
Water companies serving millions of customers in the south of England have asked customers to ration water use. They called on families to take short showers rather than baths and only to run washing machines and dishwashers when they are full. At one point, 20,000 homes in the Thames Water area were cut off.
The figure was down to 10,000 by yesterday lunchtime as mains pipes were repaired and the company pumped an extra 500million litres of water into the network.
In a statement Thames said: ‘We’re sorry to all those customers who are without water. We know how infuriating this is and want to assure them that the whole company is working flat out to fix the problems.’
Southern Water said it was work- ing to restore supplies to up to 5,000 homes in Kent. It urged customers to ‘only use the water you absolutely must’.
Welsh Water said that around 4,500 properties were without water at Monday lunchtime.
In Rotherfield, East Sussex, residents queued for water and one of them, Ed Patterson, even took some from a stream to flush his lavatory.
South West Water sent in bowsers to five locations in North Devon where households had been left without water since Friday morning. Several schools in Cornwall closed because of burst pipes, and hundreds of homes in Stockport were left without water due to a burst main.
Affinity Water said 1,000 households it serves in the Barnet area of London were without water yesterday morning. Scottish Water said it had not yet seen the same rapid thaw that caused problems elsewhere.
A Cadbury spokesman said: ‘While we have no water supply to our manufacturing site in Bournville, our supply of chocolate is not immediately impacted as we have sufficient to manage through this hopefully short disruption.’
Michael Roberts, of the industry body Water UK, said: ‘We are sorry that the effects of the extreme weather are causing many customers serious difficulties. We want to let those customers know that water companies are working as hard as they can to stabilise the situation.’
‘48 hours without a proper wash’