Over the weekend and on Monday James has been raising concerns with Anglian Water regarding the loss of water supply to many homes in the Lynn area and pressing them to fix the burst pipe. On Monday evening Anglian Water said that: "Our teams have now completed the repair to the burst water main and supply is now back to normal."
Over the weekend, James contacted Anglian Water's Chief Executive following a main pipe that burst affecting initially thousands of homes. He raised constituents' concerns at the impact of the loss of water, urged for bottled water to be made available, highlighted the position of vulnerable people, and the urgency to fix the burst main. James was told that supply was estimated to be back on Sunday evening but due to difficulties in completing the work this unfortunately did not happen. He also spoke to Cllr Stuart Dark, Leader of King's Lynn and West Norfolk borough council
On Monday, James convened a call with Anglian Water’s Chief Executive Peter Simpson and his team working on this issue along with the borough council leader. He was advised by Anglian Water that the changes to their pipes and pumps network and pumping water into the system means water is back serving properties including the highest areas & Reffley. James sought assurance that this was the case and was told that it is checked by taking readings to check pressure levels. Anglian Water told James they were confident the main repair will be completed by 4pm but he expressed the loss of trust people feel in the moving deadlines.
Once again James thanked the team on the ground who have been working hard in these conditions to fix it. On Monday evening Anglian Water said
"Our teams have now completed the repair to the burst water main and supply is now back to normal."
Residents are rightly angry at the situation. The response, communications, water distribution plans are all issues that James will be raising in the lessons learned review he suggested and Anglian Water Chief Executive has agreed to once normal service is resumed in order to improve communication and contingency plans if there is a repeat of this type of incident.
James also raised the experience of constituents' and the importance that lessons are learned on communications and contingency planning.
On Monday afternoon Anglian Water issued the following statement:
“We’re incredibly sorry for the inconvenience and frustration caused by this weekend’s burst pipe, and the subsequent interruption to the local water supply. We know this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“Our teams have worked around the clock since the incident began to get things back to normal. Our priority has been to get water flowing back to customers’ taps, and while that took longer than we at first believed it would, changes we made to the way our pipes and pumps work mean water was flowing again by Monday morning.
“In the background, we’ll carry on repairing the damaged pipe – but customers shouldn’t need to worry about that. Even when we reconnect it they shouldn’t see any interruption.
“Given the hot weather, demand for water is understandably incredibly high. This means right across the whole of the country there is always the risk that at peak times, pressure may drop. This is as true for the network in this area as it is anywhere else, and while the changes we’ve made to the pipes and pumps locally are robust enough to keep supplies on, we’ve kept plenty of staff on the ground to keep an eye on things and intervene if needed.
“Please accept our very sincere apologies. We always aim to fix issues like this without anyone noticing, but the complexities of this repair mean we weren’t able to do that, and for that we are genuinely sorry.”
“We’ll be compensating the community with payments to customers affected totalling more than £100,000. We’ll be writing to customers to about this, and the amount they receive will depend on how long they were without water. In most cases it will be at least the equivalent of free water for a month.”
If you are still experiencing issue please contact Anglian Water on 03457 145 145
