Thames Water has been scrambling to restore supplies to households across south-west London and Surrey after a large burst water main left customers without water or facing low pressure, forcing schools to close and disrupting thousands of residents.
The outage has affected 18 postcodes spanning Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Sutton and Wandsworth, as well as Elmbridge and Spelthorne in Surrey.
Thames Water initially said it had located a leak before confirming that teams were dealing with a “large burst water main”. The company warned that the repair was likely to take “some time to fix”.
“Our specialist team is now on site and working to stop the water flooding from the broken pipe,” Thames Water said.
“We’ve rerouted water around the area and customers in the Surbiton area should begin to see their water return shortly, the pressure may be lower than normal, but this will return once we’ve fixed the broken pipe.
“Colleagues are delivering bottled water to customers who are registered as water dependent on our free Priority Services Register, we’ll be with you as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this. We’ll provide another update by 28 September, 11:30am.”
The disruption has already spilled beyond individual households, with schools among those affected.
Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School and Thames Ditton Infant School said they had been forced to close because of the loss of water.
Residents described waking to find taps completely dry.
Jane Allen, from West Molesey, said she was alerted to the outage by a text message from her neighbour.
“We have none at all, it didn’t even trickle out a bit,” she told the BBC. “I have six bottles of water in the house, which will be fine for drinking but we won’t be able to do anything else.”
Thames Water said its specialist teams had been dispatched to investigate the failure and restore supplies.
“We’re sorry if your tap water isn’t running at the moment. We’re aware of an issue in the area that’s affecting the customers in KT, SW and TW postal code areas and some customers in CR4 & SM4 areas.
“Our specialist team is the way to investigate and work to restore your water supply as soon as possible.
“We know how disruptive it is if you lose your water supply, so we’ll work hard to get things back to normal as soon as we can.
“If you or someone you know needs a little extra support, our free Priority Services Register can help us to understand your situation so we can take it into account as best we can.”
The incident has also renewed scrutiny of the reliability of water infrastructure in parts of Surrey.
Monica Harding, MP for Esher & Walton, said she would seek answers from Thames Water after similar disruption in the area earlier this year.
“Residents across Esher and Walton have woken up to no water this morning, and schools have been forced to close. I am in contact with Thames Water to find out what has caused this – what they are doing to fix this immediate problem and restore supply as quickly as possible.
“This is the second major incident in three months to disrupt the lives of residents of Esher and Walton. Once supply is back, I will be pressing Thames Water for a full explanation of why this keeps happening and what they are doing to stop it happening again.”
Thames Water said engineers had located the leak and were working to restore normal service.
A company spokesperson said: “We are sorry customers in parts of south west London do not have any water or are experiencing lower pressure than normal this morning.
“Our engineers have located the leak and doing everything they can to ensure water is back on as soon as possible. The latest updates will be posted on our website, thameswater.co.uk.”
The outage highlights the vulnerability of essential infrastructure to failures that can rapidly become community-wide disruptions. A single burst main has left households without basic services, forced schools to shut and prompted the emergency delivery of bottled water to customers requiring additional support.
For Thames Water, the immediate priority is restoring supply. But the political pressure is likely to continue after the water returns, particularly if repeated failures in the same communities raise wider questions about the resilience and maintenance of the network.
Leave a Comment