Thames Water accused of ignoring warnings after hundreds in Surrey endure days without water

theguardian.com:

Thames Water has been accused of repeatedly ignoring warnings about cuts to supplies and burst pipes in Surrey where hundreds of households had to endure three days without tap water at the height of this weekend’s heatwave.

Residents, including some that were vulnerable, had to queue for bottled water on Saturday in temperatures of well over 30C (86F) after a pump failure at Netley Mill treatment works.

By Sunday morning up to 1,000 homes began a third day without water. Supplies were restored to up to 9,000 homes, but many households still complained about low water pressure.

Thames Water apologised and confirmed it handed out bottled water to residents in Guildford, Surrey Hills, Dorking and Horsham while engineers worked to restore the supply.

Liz Townsend, a Liberal Democrat county councillor for Cranleigh and Ewhurst, called for Thames Water to be fined over the incident and said the company had failed to respond to numerous complaints about previous cuts in supplies.

“We’re completely exasperated,” she said. “We had a period last summer when there was just bottled water. We had no water in February during the storm, we had no water in the previous hot period at the beginning of July. And now another hot spell and we have no water.

“Our water infrastructure is not resilient enough to cope with all the new housing and the ageing pipes. Whenever they increase the pressure in the system, we get more and more bursts. I’ve been having talks with Thames Water for 10 years, and I’ve been up Westminster several times to raise it, but nobody takes any notice.”

Townsend wrote to Sarah Bentley, the chief executive of Thames Water, in July after a previous interruption in supply. The letter, seen by the Guardian, accused the company