Water outage hits thousands of homes as customers learn of bill rises

Residents have been queuing for up to two hours to get bottled water as thousands of homes in Hampshire are still without supplies following a “technical issue”.

The disruption comes as households served by Southern Water discovered their bills would see the highest increase in the country.

Homes in Southampton, Romsey, Eastleigh, Totton, and parts of the New Forest have experienced a loss of water or low pressure – and more than 30 schools will remain closed on Thursday.

It is understood that water supplies are not expected to return to houses until later on Thursday and into Friday morning.

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Tankers were deployed on Wednesday to supply water for Southampton General Hospital.

The issue began on Wednesday morning after Southern Water issued an update confirming there was a technical problem at the Testwood water supply works preventing water from leaving the site.

The company said in a statement on Thursday morning that the issue had been solved and customers will start to be reconnected later in the day.

It came as regulator Ofwat announced that Southern Water customers will face a 53% increase in bills over the next five years – significantly higher than the average bill increase of 36% across England and Wales.

Residents have described queuing for up to two hours to reach one of three bottle distribution centres at the Asda supermarket in Totton.

Long queues of cars could be seen causing congestion in the surrounding streets, while some had walked for up to three miles to collect their allocation of water.

Richard Hallett told the PA news agency: “I’m disgusted, It has taken me two hours to get here.

“It’s disgraceful, they haven’t organised anything at all, I came home last night and realised we didn’t have any water and now the bill rise is just salt in the wounds.”

Aiden, who did not want to give a surname, said: “I have had to walk two or three miles because the bus broke down as well.

“It would help if there was more communication, some kind of notification of what is happening.

“The increase in bills is quite difficult to deal with.”

Plamen Bonchev said: “It’s not great in the 21st century that we are without water.

“It’s quite horrendous but there is nothing we can do, we complain but nothing happens.”

Steve Watts, who was stuck in traffic, said: “They should have had a spare reservoir, I am not happy with them at all and it’s disgusting they’re putting the bills up.”

Another customer said: “I am not happy because it cost me £2.80 for a bottle of water because they gave me some but it’s not enough.”

Dominc Lebrook, 24, said: “We just walked down, we’re a couple of miles away, because the traffic is pretty bad.”

Deniss Kovpajevs said: “It ruined my day completely, I had plans, I can’t take a shower, do my chores.

“The bills going up, you’re meant to provide a good service, right?”

A spokeswoman for University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHSFT) said: “We are continuing to work with Southern Water on contingency arrangements to ensure our hospitals maintain water supplies and are receiving regular deliveries by tankers to our site.

“Water supplies are currently available in parts of our hospital site and we are prioritising delivering and restocking bottled water supplies to areas that remain without.

“Measures have been put in place to support vulnerable patients who are being discharged to ensure they return home with a supply of water.

“We ask patients to continue to attend appointments as planned but to allow extra time for their journey and in accessing parking facilities, due to the access requirements being put in place to enable delivery of those supplies.”

Southern Water posted on Twitter on Thursday afternoon that 25,000 of the 58,000 houses affected now had water again.

It said: “We’ve resumed water supply to nearly 25,000 homes & businesses and are working hard to get everyone back in supply by the end of the day.

“We’re committed to supporting those on the PSR (priority service register) and are redoubling our efforts in making deliveries.”

Tim McMahon, managing director for water at Southern Water, said: “We’re very sorry for the disruption caused to customers who’ve lost supply.

“Overnight our teams have fixed the problem at the Testwood water works and restarted the site.

“We’re now filling up the reservoir again with drinking water, ready to restore supply.

“This is a gradual process which must be done carefully and safely, but households will start to be reconnected later today.”

Jill Woolger, 66, from Dibden Purlieu near the New Forest, has been without water since Wednesday morning and said she only had around a litre of bottled water left to last her for the evening.

The retired nurse, who lives with an autoimmune condition, is registered on the firm’s priority list and was told she could expect bottled water to be delivered to her home by 7pm, but claims she did not receive any.

She told the PA news agency: “I think what I’m so fed up about is that I’m on the priority service, but I haven’t had any water.”

Ms Woolger lives with ulcerative colitis, which is an inflammatory bowel disease that can cause ulcers, and psoriatic arthritis, and said her autoimmune conditions can make her “more prone to infections”.

She added that having water to keep her house clean is vital to avoid impacting her bowel movements.

She claimed water issues in her area seemed to be a recurrent problem after being hit with outages three times in two years, and criticised Southern Water for not offering better support to customers on the priority list.

A Defra spokesman said: “The water minister Emma Hardy has met with the chief executive of Southern Water to make sure the company is taking urgent steps to support residents and resolve the issue as soon as possible.

“Incidents like this are why we are forcing water companies to double the compensation provided to customers for supply issues.

“We are also carrying out a full review of the sector to shape further legislation that will transform how our water system works, increasing investment to upgrade crumbling infrastructure and strengthening regulation to better hold companies to account.”

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee (Efra) announced that Southern Water will be the first water company to appear before MPs on January 21 to explain the reasons behind water supply issues and “systemic problems”.

It will also look at the company’s financial arrangements including bonuses and “performance issues”.