Sadly, this incident is nothing new to people living in SE19, SE20, SE23, SE26, SE27 and SW16 – the affected areas. At the beginning of December, pretty much the same postcodes suffered five days of water issues, with many homes having no water for several days.
Unfortunately – and excuse the pun – Thames Water bosses couldn’t run a tap, let alone the largest water company in the UK.
The company’s woes are numerous and well-documented; from pumping raw sewage into the sea and providing undrinkable tap water to being at risk of going bust due to massive debt issues.
This week, fights reportedly broke out in Sainsbury’s car park – the only ‘water bank’ Thames Water had set up for the thousands of people affected.
The latest burst main was badly timed – coming just day after Thames Water emailed customers to inform them of 35% price hikes from April. So, prices up, water supply down.
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Your rights in a water outage
According to Ofwat regulations, a water company must maintain a minimum water pressure of “seven metres static head” (equivalent to 0.7 bar) in the communication pipe serving a property. If pressure falls below this on two separate occasions within a 28-day period, lasting more than one hour each, the customer is entitled to a compensation payment under the Guaranteed Standards Scheme (GSS).
The GSS says customers are entitled to £25 for each period of low pressure and another £20 if supply is not restored in a specified time period.
Some water firms offer much more generous compensation than this minimum – including Thames Water. Its Customer Guarantee Scheme states: “If the water supply turns off unexpectedly, such as following a burst water main, we’ll always aim to have the supply restored within 12 hours.
“If we don’t, we’ll automatically credit your Thames Water account with £30. If there are additional delays, then we’ll pay an extra £30 for each further complete 12-hour period that the water interruption continues. We’ll automatically credit your Thames Water account within 20 working days.”
But the trouble is, these figures are just empty promises that don’t translate into actual cash for affected customers.
My home had five days of either no water or low pressure between 30 November and 4 December 2024. But my attempts to get a single penny of compensation – let alone the estimated £300 I am owed – have proved fruitless. I’ve filled in online compensation forms, chatted to bots, messaged Thames Water on WhatsApp, complained on X/Twitter, and, more recently, written a formal complaint.
Occasionally, I’ve been thrown a crumb of hope that I’ll see some money. Promises have ranged from “it will be automatically applied to your account” (it wasn’t) to “we’ll investigate and get back to you” (they didn’t). Local Facebook groups are full of similar tales of customers being fobbed off or ignored.
An official statement from Thames Water said: “We are taking care of water for 16 million customers across the region, every single day. When water supply interruptions occur, we do our best to resolve the issue as quickly and safely as possible, however, sometimes this isn’t always possible.
“In these instances, we calculate eligibility for compensation based on data from pressure monitors within our network [that] work out how long the interruption is deemed to have lasted at the individual property. Where eligible, customers will be automatically credited on their Thames Water account.”
It’s interesting wording. So Thames Water will use its own “pressure monitors” to “deem” whether each property was sufficiently affected. It seems customers’ lived experiences of supply interruption count for nothing, despite those households having to face ever-rising water bills.
