Hosepipe Ban but not a ‘Leak Ban’ – Thames Water hypocrisy?

Along Ryles Lane in Lockeridge water had been streaming out of ‘a leak’ for weeks. So much so that the trail of water flowed along Ryles Lane, then flooded down the small Ivy Lane, nearly to the end more than a hundred metres away and even in this recent very hot and dry weather enough water was flowing out for it not to all have evaporated until nearly the end of Ivy Lane even as it spread out across a hot road tarmac. Until yesterday what had Thames Water done about this? Nothing. Now the leak appears to have been fixed, for now anyway as this leak is not the first from this point. The last similar leak was about a year or so back.

The leak was first reported on 17 July. This was almost a week before they imposed the hosepipe ban. Nothing happened initially. Then, when Thames Water did finally respond it was to tell the resident who reported the leak that it was ‘customer side’, and down to that customer to fix.

Thames Water were unwilling to say who or where the customer(s) was (were) (GDPR reasons) but it’s likely that this pipe is a mains branch to serve a group rather than just one customer. It is sited at the end of a path, a right of way that leads up to West Woods. If this is so then it would likely be to serve a group of customers – businesses and private properties.

Either way, Thames Water aren’t saying, other than just to blame their customers. It appears that the source of the leak is a block containing a meter (or more than one?), a point where work had been done recently so is this really a ‘customer side leak’? If so it can only be the responsibility of Thames Water, especially so if this point serves more than one customer. If the source were even a single meter (or connection to/from) this is a device fitted and maintained solely by Thames Water hence it could only be their responsibility.

But this nature of response is not unusual, first a slow response, then a denial of responsibility, then followed (normally) by the ultimate recognition that it is their responsibility, then it gets fixed. All the while water floods out, 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a rate that would put most normal (banned!) hosepipes to shame. A similar situation occurred earlier this year, less than 100m from the site of this leak. Eventually Thames Water did accept responsibility and fix the leak. But that took months.

One local resident did point out that there were beneficiaries to the leak and Thames Water’s tardiness and prevarication – ‘the birds have somewhere to drink from’.