Oxford: Traffic and supply disruption after Heyford Hill burst water main

Drivers have been warned to avoid the area around a burst water main as homes and businesses remain without water.

The pipe burst at the Heyford Hill roundabout in Oxford early on Tuesday, leaving the road underwater.

The A4142 is shut eastbound between the Rose Hill and Heyford Hill roundabouts, creating delays in the city.

Thames Water is carrying out repairs at the site and has set up three water stations for those in the area with no water supply.

Water flooded the roads around the roundabout

Thames Water said work was progressing to plan

Bottled water stations opened at Tesco in Ambassador Avenue, Asda in London Road, Wheatley, and later one with pedestrian access only at Horspath Cricket Club, and will remain open until 21:00 BST.

Some residents complained of a lack of stock at the Wheatley site when they turned up on Wednesday morning, with one tweeting of "greedy people taking trolley loads".

The council later said "rolling deliveries" would take place throughout the day "to keep stations stocked up".

"We're anticipating we'll complete the complex repair by the end of the day, allowing reservoirs to fill overnight", a Thames Water statement said.

"This should mean supplies return by early tomorrow.

"Our engineers have exposed most of the damaged section of pipe and work is progressing to plan."

But it said it expected the traffic disruption to "unfortunately continue until at least the weekend and possibly into early next week".

Engineers have had to dig around other utility services to fix the burst main

Oxford City Council has urged drivers to avoid travelling into the city and also advised the water supply disruption "is expected to continue into Thursday".

The council has urged people to check-in on any vulnerable neighbours, particularly if they may need water collected for them. Schools and nurseries have also been forced to close as they are without water.

Sally Fitchett, owner of the Lighthouse Nursery School in Newington, said: "From the basic hygiene you would have in a house, imagine having 50 children in a building, you need water.

"It's just not possible to run without water."

Andrew Gant, Oxfordshire County Council's cabinet member for highways management, said: "We shouldn't be seeing these disruptions happening so often and the company will need to explain to us why it has happened, and what they are going to try to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"Does that come down to the structure of the company or their ability to invest or is it something to do with extreme weather? I don't know, I'm not an engineer, but they need to tell us."

In August a pipe leak flooded the footpath by Littlemore roundabout, off Oxford Road.

Water supply disruption is expected to continue into Thursday, the council said

'Not good enough'

Kieran Ingram, director of Thames Water's water networks, apologised to those in the 300 properties who still have no supply and all of those facing disruptions.

"It's not good enough, we need to do better in making sure these things don't happen in the first place," he said.

"This is Victorian pipework in a lot of respects and we put a lot of pressure to put water through it."

He added that changing ground conditions "because of the dry weather can cause infrastructure failures. We are aware of it and we [were] there to fix is as soon as possible".

Homes and businesses have low pressure or no water as a result of the burst

The number of people affected is expected to slightly increase over the day as work continues but most should have supply back by Thursday morning, he said.

Mr Ingram said the faults in the Littlemore area over recent weeks did "absolutely not" mean there was a "hotspot" of faults in the area and that they were "absolutely a coincidence".

Thames Water said its engineers had been working on the burst pipe overnight and were "working to boost local water supplies".

The water firm said: "We know how inconvenient and worrying it is not to have water and are doing all we can to get things back to normal."

The firm added the issue was affecting the level of the reservoir supplying the area and urged people to only use "essential water today, while we complete repairs".

The firm said tankers had been used to take the water away from the dual carriageway while others pumped water into the network.