Anger as residents in Morecambe still without water after supplies restored

Residents in Morecambe said they were still without water after supplies were restored to 16,000 homes in the town two days after they were turned off.

Householders in central Morecambe called water company United Utilities on Wednesday evening as they still had had no water, after the firm put out a statement saying that all taps should be flowing again.

A resident of Cross Street in Morecambe said on Wednesday night that he'd been told the company had received calls from a few streets in the town and they were hoping to fix the issue by Thursday morning.

United Utilities turned off the water supply in Morecambe, the West End, Bare, White Lund and Sandylands areas on Monday afternoon to tackle widespread issues caused by burst pipes and leaks on the network after a 'freeze-thaw' in temperatures.

The shutdown was expected to last 24 hours but some residents and businesses had to wait longer than that to see their water return, with some saying they were without supplies for four days or more, stretching back to last weekend.

The company set up emergency water bottle stations in Morecambe and there was massive demand; and they also made more than 7,000 deliveries of bottles to vulnerable people.

A spokesperson for the company said on Wednesday: "The mains water network in Morecambe is back to normal operation, so the bottled water stations set up by United Utilities are now closed.

"Customers’ taps began flowing as usual again throughout yesterday evening and into this morning, and with the storage refill complete the network is back to normal."

Kevin Fowlie, United Utilities Incident Manager, said: “We apologise for the disruption of the past couple of days, and thank customers for their patience and understanding.

“We will be writing to everyone affected with details of automatic compensation payments. Customers will not need to contact us to receive this.

“We’re very grateful to everyone who has been reporting bursts and leaks on our network, and we will continue our hard work to repair issues as quickly as possible.”

Problems with the water supply in Lancaster, Morecambe, Heysham, Carnforth and surrounding areas began over the weekend and then on Monday many more homes and businesses suffered loss of water supply.

Some local firms had to close early on Monday due to water pressure issues, and many did not open on Tuesday, with some still closed on Wednesday.

Many residents and business owners have questioned why there was no prior warning that the water supply would be turned off in Morecambe, and that there might be issues with pipes due to the extreme weather conditions.

David Hodgson, who lives in Morecambe in a managed property for over 55s, has written a letter of complaint to the chief executive officer of United Utilities about the way the situation was handled.

Mr Hodgson asked: "How do you justify leaving vulnerable people without water for over three days and thus jeopardising the health and life of your customers?

"To achieve the first delivery of bottled water took between 20 and 30 phone calls, each requiring a wait of up to an hour before getting through to a person, having lost water on Saturday and getting the first delivery at 10pm on Tuesday.

"We have one resident (who) on medical grounds must drink a minimum of two litres of water a day but was unable to because she could not carry water the distance from the shops.

"Also why was this situation not anticipated and where was your planning and stress testing of that emergency plan?"

We asked United Utilities to explain what they had done to warn people of impending issues with their water supply.

A United Utilities spokesperson said: "Prior to the incident in Morecambe, we began providing advice to customers in November about the steps they could take to protect and check their pipes – our ‘Winter Wise’ activity began ahead of the cold snap and had a three stage approach - prepare, act now and what to do in an emergency. This has been run across various channels including direct customer comms, social media, website and radio advertising and has featured written advice as well as videos.

"We issued 1.2m customer emails with winter pipe protection advice, gave away 10,000 ‘tap jackets’ for outside taps and have got an ongoing regional radio advertising campaign which features tips on how customers can protect their homes from frozen and burst pipes. More than 800,000 people have seen or interacted with our social media activity We also issued a press release to all regional media and more than 54,000 customers have viewed the advice pages on our website – we introduced a pop-up which means this is the first thing people visiting the website will see.

"In Lancaster and Morecambe specifically, we reached more than 22,500 people through local Facebook community groups as well as issuing 265,479 text messages to domestic and business customers in the area to communicate latest updates and support available. We posted regular updates on our website, issued media alerts and spoke on local and regional radio and TV stations throughout the course of the incident.

"For our priority services customers in Lancaster and Morecambe we’ve made over 7,000 bottled water deliveries throughout Saturday, Sunday and Monday evenings."

United Utilities said the reason why restoring water supplies took longer than the originally stated 24 hours was, in most cases, because the supply was restored gradually, saying this was "to ensure they protected the quality of water consumers receive and to prevent any further bursts on the network of pipes that bring the water to your home".

Morecambe Business Improvement District (BID), speaking on behalf of town businesses which were forced to close due to the lack of water, said on Tuesday: 

"This morning we sent an emailed letter to United Utilities, on behalf of Morecambe businesses, requesting advanced compensation considering the unique situation they have put us in given the time of year.

"We have approached it as almost a group action claim to signify the level of concern. We suspect everyone will be asked to submit individual claims but, hopefully, the ball is rolling."

To report loss of water supply or a leak to United Utilities please visit https://www.unitedutilities.com/emergencies/report-a-problem