Dozens of families ‘angry and let down’ after waking up to no water on Christmas

Around 50 households in the Strood and Rochester areas of Kent woke up to no water this morning following disruption earlier this week for which Southern Water said it was “very sorry”.

A burst water main initially left more than 1,000 families in the region without water, with the provider’s teams working around the clock to restore it to all but around 50 homes in Kent by this morning.

Water collection stations have been installed in Rochester and the Strood Sports Centre opened between 9:30am and 12pm today for people to shower if they were unable to do so at home.

But Zoe Burgess, 50, told KentOnline that she felt “angry and very let down” when she woke up on Monday morning to find no running water at her home in Rochester.

She said Southern Water delivered 12 bottles of water to her house around 24 hours after she noticed the outage but that it wasn’t enough to facilitate more than four toilet flushes.

“I’ve sat on the toilet absolutely gagging because it’s disgusting,” Ms Burgess said. “I can’t wash our clothes and I can’t run a bath. I’ve had washing sitting in the sink since Monday.

“My neighbour, who has young children, had to walk down to Martin Road and back with a bucket at 11.30pm. Are we in the third world here?” 

The 50-year-old, who lives with her partner and two older children, said she has been forced to prepare a Christmas meal without any water and is planning to visit her in-laws’ on boxing day, primarily to take a shower.

“I’ve not had a bath since Sunday night. I’m angry and feel very let down,” she added.

A spokesperson for Southern Water told KentOnline: “As we go into Christmas Day, we have restored supply to all but 50 properties in the area and we will continue to work around the clock to fix the issue for the remaining properties.

“Overnight, our support teams provided a double delivery of bottled water directly to all households originally impacted, to make certain they had enough for Christmas Day.”

The latest disruption comes less than a week after Southern Water pledged to deliver £9.7 million in compensation after 58,000 households in Hampshire went without water for nearly two days.

The issues, which impacted homes and businesses in Southampton, Romsey, Eastleigh, Totton and parts of the New Forest, was linked to a fault at the Testwood water supply works and was fixed on the evening of Thursday, December 19, after being first reported on Wednesday morning.

Chief executive of the company Lawrence Dosden apologised to those impacted for “the huge disruption and inconvenience it caused so many people so close to Christmas”.

He described it as the “single biggest water supply incident in our company’s history” and acknowledged that Southern Water had “failed” in its response by not initially providing enough water bottle stations and not providing sufficient support to those on the priority services register.

Mr Gosden partly attributed the fault to the “ageing infrastructure” of the Testwood site and also pledged “badly-needed investment”, which will see customer bills “rise significantly over the next five years”.