Thames Water outage causing distress, council says

Thousands of households in east London and Essex affected by a major water outage are undergoing "significant and unacceptable inconvenience and distress", the leader of Redbridge Council has said.

About 10,000 homes were left with low water pressure or no water after a series of bursts in South Woodford last weekend and are now due to have supplies restored by Friday, after Thames Water completed repairs to three burst mains.

The firm had previously said the pipes would be fixed by Wednesday or Thursday. Council leader Kam Rai has called the response "simply not good enough".

Thames Water said repairs on High Road, Daisy Road and Chigwell Road were complete. Six postcodes remain affected.

The company said engineers were "working to restore normal service", adding that teams were "carefully recharging the network", a process that involves gradually increasing water pressure to avoid further problems.

The six postcodes that remain affected are IG5, IG6, IG7, IG8, IG10 and RM4.

Thames Water said it was "working towards all customers being back in supply by Friday", although it warned recovery times would vary depending on how quickly the network stabilised. The company said some households could regain water sooner.

Tankers and engineering teams were being deployed overnight to help restore supplies "as quickly and safely as possible", Thames Water added.

The firm has said bottled water stations at Beal High School in Ilford and Fairlop Ice Kingdom will remain open until 21:00 BST for customers still affected by the outage.

The company is encouraging people to use the Beal High School site where possible, as it has more capacity and shorter queues are expected.

"Over recent days, we have heard too many examples of residents not receiving bottled water as promised," Rai said. "That is simply not good enough.

"We offered additional council staff and volunteers to Thames Water at the start of the week to support the distribution of bottled water.

"That offer has now been accepted, allowing us to step up our response and begin delivering water directly to affected households."

The disruption began on Saturday when a water main burst on Daisy Road in South Woodford. A second burst on Chigwell Road followed on Sunday, leading to widespread supply problems across the area.

During the outage, residents reported queuing for hours at bottled water stations, while some customers on Thames Water's Priority Services Register said they had not received the support they expected.

Thames Water said it was continuing to support affected customers through bottled water deliveries for vulnerable residents and the operation of bottled water stations.

A company spokesperson said: "Our teams continue to work tirelessly in extremely difficult conditions, monitoring the network as supplies return.

"We kindly ask customers to continue treating our colleagues with courtesy and respect, both when contacting us by phone and when visiting our bottled water stations."

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