Thames Water apologises after supply issues in Surrey

Water stations were set up in Guildford and Godalming in November

A water company has apologised after thousands of customers in Surrey were left without water for several days.

Thames Water supply issues affected customers in the Guildford and Godalming area in November.

Interim co-chief executive officer, Alastair Cochran said the company had failed to communicate with customers.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, MP for South West Surrey, and fellow Conservative MP for Guildford Angela Richardson had organised a public meeting.

Mr Cochran told the meeting Thames Water had "failed in the basic art of communication" and provided information which was unclear, often conflicted with what people were hearing elsewhere and was not frequent enough.

In November a major incident was declared after a technical issue at a water treatment works in Shalford with many people forced to queue at bottled water stations in Godalming and Guildford.

'We failed'

Speaking at the meeting, Mr Cochran said: "The most important thing we do as a water company is ensure a consistent supply of high quality water.

"We failed in that core duty to you all."

Mr Cochran said there was very little storage capacity in the South East and water could run out very quickly.

Thames Water said it was compensating all customers hit by supply interruptions for more than 12 consecutive hours and was investing £93m to make the Guildford water supply system more resilient.

Jeremy Hunt told the meeting 13,000 homes had been left without water supplies for between two and seven days, measures had to be taken to protect hospitals, and businesses lost thousands of pounds.

He told BBC Radio Surrey after the meeting not all of the questions had been answered.

"We're going to need to reconvene in March and the fundamental thing we want to know is how we're going to make sure the same thing doesn't go wrong again," he said.

"I don't think we got the full answer to that. We need to know."

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