Fourth water outage this year and Chigwell residents still being fobbed off by Thames Water

Image taken after leak on Hainault road last year

Please sign our petition (here)

After a fourth water outage in 2021 Chigwell residents are still expected to believe there is no major issue.  Thames Water in a conversation with Mr Chowdhry Chairman of the Chigwell Row Residents Association advised that a booster has tripped a recurring theme that has left him and large numbers of other residents upset:

CRRA has written several reports on the outages and complained to Thames Water over a dozen times:

On the 9th of January 2020 a major pipe burst on Manford Way (click here)

On 26th October 2019 repairs were being undertaken on Lambourne Road (click here)

On 22nd October it took Thames Water 5 hours to reach a reported leak on Lambourne Road (click here)

CRRA wrote to Thames Water on 3oth September 2020 calling for an overhaul of their existing infrastructure (click here)

Hainault Road was flooded on September 2020 - Watch video (click here)

Thames water try to wriggle out of admitting there is a local problem October 6th 2020 (click here)

Thames Water try to make it difficult for local to coordinate complaints November 3rd 2020 (click here )

Our District Councillor was affected by new water leak on October 6th 2020 (click here)

January 9th 2020, Three postcode areas struck with out water after a further Thames Water leak (click here)

Fed up of getting nowhere with complaints we sought an Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) Request and were astounded by the results:

As requested, please see the below table for the number of mains repairs carried out as a result of burst mains within the IG7 post code.

 

Please note we currently record bursts at water network level for regulatory reporting. This may mean that the figures may include bursts which have occurred just outside the IG7 postcode. 

 

 

Reporting Period	Count of Mains Repairs
AR16	32
AR17	37
AR18	16
AR19	35
AR20	34
AR21	28

 

A few points to note:

• The data for AR21 is to the end of September 2020
• We are unable to provide the number of booster outages as we do not have the alarms available on the sites to provide the requested data.

 

Please be aware on a routine basis we do not currently analyse the environmental or systemic factors that have caused regular leaks and malfunctions.  We also do not currently carry out cost benefit or economic analysis at a post code level. 

 

The report suggests that the number of main repairs is even more significant than we thought.  But that may be due to not every report making our community Whatsapp group, some of the repairs being slightly out of the reach of our members and the fact that many repairs happen during unsociable hours when most of us are asleep.  What is evident is that there is a need for an overhaul of the existing infrastructure and we continue to pursue Thames Water on your behalf for these changes to be made.  It is simply not good enough that we still have the old Victorian pipes utilised in our current framework.  We must now have a programme of removal of the old lead pipes and installation of the polypipe blue mains water pipes made from Polyethylene.

We continue to list the water leaks and booster trips locally in complaints to Thames Water and in our blog posts for our members to stay on top with their complaints:

A brief look through our community whatsapp group which has over 300 members reveals this list of dates for water loss to our supply to residential homes. Tap drought occurred on these dates:

01.07.19

27.08.19

09.01.20

19.04.20

29.05.20

16.06.20

19.08.20

22.08.20

21.10.20 (Low pressure was discovered by those using taps before 7am 1 resident complained)

22.10.20 (repair of flood at Lambourne Road 3 residents called in)

08.01.21

09.01.21

14.01.21

28.01.21 (7 residents emailed in and 1 call from Wilson)

There was also extremely low pressure water (a dribble) on 14th Sept 2020.

It should be noted that some of these dates are a start date for two days of no water.

CRRA is concerned about the risk of infections due to the failure to wash hands effectively during the Coronavirus pandemic, of the health and safety concerns of not having access to clean drinking water and water to flush toilets.  We are also concerned about the number of days local residents are having to deal with severe traffic delays due to repairs and flooding.  Moroever, in context of depleting resources and global environmental standards these leaks simply must be curbed to protect future generations.

Today we again write a complaint to Thames Water which is also being sent to our Parish Council and to our District Council.

Please sign our petition (here)