Campaigners have blamed a lack of investment by Thames Water after more than 13,000 people in Surrey were left without water following Storm Ciarán.
Thames Water apologised on Monday morning after it was late to open bottled water stations to help residents. “We’ve now reopened our two bottled water stations, after Storm Ciarán caused issues at Shalford water treatment works. We’re really sorry for the delay in doing so,” the firm said.
There remains no water or low pressure in Guildford and the surrounding areas, covering postcodes GU1 to GU8. Underground reservoirs have run “very low”, and Thames Water said supplies will “only gradually return” throughout Monday.
Schools in the area have closed and children are being taught online. Charterhouse, a private school in Godalming, was one of more than a dozen that told pupils to stay home because of the water shortage.
James Wallace, chief executive of the campaign group River Action, said: “It is a disgrace that a UK water company must resort to handing out even one bottle of water. This is not Haiti, this is one of the wealthiest parts of the UK.”
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“To blame Storm Ciarán is unacceptable. We are witnessing the water industry’s systemic lack of investment in its infrastructure and services.”
Thames Water said on Friday it was cutting about 300 jobs from its workforce of about 8,200.
The company has so far not explained what caused the issues at Shalford, a stance that campaigner Ash Smith, of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, said was “baffling”.
However, the plant’s outage was caused by Storm Ciarán causing problems with the turbidity, or cloudiness, of the raw water the Shalford plant draws on. Normally a water treatment plant adjusts automatically to detect poor quality raw water, but that failed to happen in this instance. That meant the plant had to be stopped and the water flushed out. The treatment works are now back online.
Alan Smith, a water industry veteran who runs the Water-People consultancy, said that treatment processes should be able to cope with the deterioration in the turbidity of the raw water.
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“This is just yet another situation which is unfortunate and screaming out for some form of change with the water model. Something’s got to give. It’s not good enough to go from crisis to crisis, if it’s not a financial issue it’s an operational issue. There has to be a real focus on the ownership model,” he said.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor and MP for South West Surrey, said that he heard from Thames Water’s chief executive, Alastair Cochran, on Sunday. “Still some risk but remains promising that a solution may be in sight,” he wrote on X.
A major incident was declared by Surrey’s Local Resilience Forum, which includes the emergency services, local authorities, NHS and the Environment Agency. “We understand the frustration that residents have, which is why we are building up resilience in the area and have committed to invest in building a new 9km water transfer pipeline to connect part of the Guildford area to an alternative source of water,” Thames Water said in a statement.
Storm Ciarán hit the south coast and the Channel Islands with heavy rain and gusts of up to 100mph on Thursday. On Monday morning 27 areas had flood warnings and 111 flood alerts were in place across the south, east, the Midlands and northeast of England, according to the Environment Agency.
