Water pressure 'improving' after burst pipe repair

One customer said he had been without water for more than 30 hours.

Pressure is "improving" across an area which has been left without water for more than a day due to a burst pipe, said Thames Water.

Residents in Royal Wootton Bassett, Thornhill and surrounding Wiltshire villages of Bradenstoke and Lyneham began experiencing problems with their water supply on Tuesday morning.

On Wednesday, the company opened a station to distribute bottled water and delivered supplies to customers.

Thames Water has apologised and said engineers are working to resolve the problem.

The company added that pressure may drop again during peak demand, between 17:00 and 19:00 BST.

“In the meantime, to reduce the impact to customers, we’re using tankers to pump water into the water network," a spokesperson said.

“We’re very sorry to our customers in Royal Wootton Bassett and Thornhill who are experiencing low water pressure or no water.

“Our engineers responded to and successfully repaired a burst mains water pipe this morning and are now flushing the pipe in order to bring it back into service."

Customers in need of bottled water can collect free supplies at Tesco Superstore on Beversbrook Lane in Calne until 21:00.

'Dragged on'

Residents have reported not having any running water for more than 30 hours.

Gary Lloyd, 69, who lives in the Bungalow Park retirement community in Bradenstoke, said all his neighbours were without running water.

He said: "Most people who live in the village are very mature people, and you had to go out and get water for people or share water with your neighbours because clearly there is no water station within walking distance."

"It's dragged on," he told BBC Radio Wiltshire.

He added people were flushing their toilets with water from their garden water butts and were unable to do laundry.

Thames Water is working to fix the problem

He described the response from Thames Water as "fragmented" and "disjointed", adding that bearing in mind the scale of the outage he "would have thought there'd be a bit more 'oomph'" to the operation.

Thames Water said while the infrastructure is being flushed and brought back into use, it is also "bringing water into the area through other parts of the network to improve the situation" and using tankers to pump water into the water network.

"Should customers require additional support, we would encourage them to call us on 0800 316 9800. We have also sent text messages to impacted residents and continue to post the latest updates on our website."