Severn Trent Water criticised over response to burst pipe

A utility company has defended itself in the face of criticism after a burst pipe left thousands of people without water.

Severn Trent Water said the impact of the outage last month was complex and widespread, which made it difficult to keep everyone up-to-date.

A 24ins mains pipe burst in Epperstone on February 21, aff-ecting around 16,000 homes in Bingham, Radcliffe and surrounding areas.

Severn Trent Water has confirmed everyone left without water for 12 hours or more will receive £30 in compensation.

Town councillors in Bingham criticised Severn Trent Water’s response and suggested they needed to do more.

Community committee chairman Mr Rowan Bird suggested Severn Trent should give a donation to a charity that provides water to developing countries.

“If they had given a donation to a charity it would have done a lot of good,” he said.

Mr Bird said under the law, the water company did not have to give any compensation unless it could be proved they hadn’t maintained the pipe properly.

“The least we can do is write them a letter of complaint,” he said.

Mr Bird said many people in Bingham had not received compensation and were puzzled as to why they had been left out.

Town clerk Mrs Lynn Holland revealed the council received £30 refunds for the cemetery and the Old Court House.

Deputy Mayor Mr Alan Harvey said: “Severn Trent’s emergency plan didn’t work as well as it should have done.

“I am concerned about the lack of information their staff had.

“It became perfectly clear that when I went through [on the phone] to a manager that they hadn’t had any information from the site until 12.30pm.

“They [Severn Trent] kept putting the same message out on the website and nobody was feeding that message through to people on the front line.”

Firm says money has been given to Water Aid

Bingham town and district councillor Mr Francis Purdue-Horan said Severn Trent Water should be invited to a council meeting to explain what went wrong.

“They need to tell us what will happen in the future if anything like this happens again,” he said.

Severn Trent revealed at a drop-in session in Bingham earlier this month that the burst pipe ran from Oxton reservoir to Cotgrave reservoir and was a key artery in Severn Trent’s water supply.

It was not possible to re-route water from another supply for the vast majority of residents affected.

The wrought iron pipe, a section of which was on display at the session, was made in 1952 and had broken twice before.

A spokesman for Severn Trent Water said they had given almost £500,000 to Water Aid during the last financial year.

“We would like to apologise again to our customers who were affected by the burst water pipe at Epperstone and can assure them that we have taken on board their comments from the three drop-in sessions we organised in the area and from the survey that we sent with recent letters,” they said.

“We did our best to keep customers fully informed on the day as to what was going on but the sheer complexity of the situation, combined with the widespread nature of the homes and businesses affected, made it extremely hard to provide an estimate as to when customers were going to be returned to supply before the afternoon.

“We would normally hope to do better, and we are already looking at ways in which we can better manage any potential future issues in the area by investing further in our network to make it more robust.

“We have now written to everyone who will receive compensation, which is the equivalent to more than a month’s free supply of our water and waste water services, and are looking at other claims on a case-by-case basis.”