Councillors blast United Utilities’ response to Heswall water chaos

Sep 28 2011 by Helen Hunt, Heswall News

COUNCILLORS have said lessons must be learned from the water chaos that gripped Heswall over the weekend.

As many as 4,000 customers in the CH60 and CH61 areas were left without water or with low water pressure for almost 24 hours, causing widespread disruption to people’s homes and businesses.

The manager of the Jug and Bottle on Mount Avenue, Gary Byrne, said Heswall was like a “ghost town” on Saturday night because the lack of running water forced many pubs and restaurants to close.

United Utilities said there was a problem with the pumps which feed Heswall service reservoir, a large tank of treated water which serves the area.

Ward councillors today said the water company needed to learn lessons from the incident which lasted from Friday through to Saturday night.

Cllr Les Rowlands described the water firm’s response as “woeful”. Fellow Heswall councillor Andrew Hodson said councillors had to “shake” United Utilities into action.

But a spokeswoman for United Utilities said as soon as they knew about the problem with the pumps, at 6.30pm on Friday night, they were working to fix it and that when this repair was lasting longer than they anticipated they immediately started to mobilise water supplies.

Cllr Rowlands said: “Obviously things happen, but in the 21st century, from a company like United Utilities, you would expect protocols would be in place to impart information to people to help you tackle the problem that you have got. They didn’t do anything like that at all which I think is disgraceful.

“Us councillors didn’t know, the council didn’t know and local people didn’t know. They were woeful in their response to this and I think lessons need to be learned. People did not know where they could get water.”

The Jug and Bottle closed on Saturday night because of water shortages. Mr Byrne said: “Heswall was closed Saturday night.

“Almost every single pub and restaurant in the town centre was closed.

“It was like a ghost town. ”

Hayley Earp, from Ruby’s Hairdressers on May Road, said they managed to open on the Saturday but they could only do dry cuts. She said: “It was awful. Saturday is one of our busiest days so we’ve lost a lot of money.”

Residents, too, were unhappy with the water company’s response.

One said there was panic in the Heswall Tesco store on Saturday with people panicking about getting hold of water and were buying bottles in bulk.

She added: “People were grabbing anything they could to flush their toilets with – even if it was Perrier.

Scott Beard, water network manager at United Utilities, said: "We are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.

“Over the next week we will be writing to everyone who was affected with details of their compensation and how to claim back for any bottled water they may have bought, customers do not need to contact us.”