United Utilities has given people an update on compensation payments following a burst water pipe in Merseyside last month.
Parts of Sefton and North Liverpool were left for almost two days without water as workmen were forced to dig up a large chunk of Church Road, Litherland after the main road was flooded on the morning of Saturday, July 23. Now, the water company has sent out an email to those affected by the lack of running water.
The company has confirmed that people should be receiving their compensation in the near future as well as apologising for the interruption. United Utilities also claimed that more than 120,000 bottles of water were handed out, 280,000 direct messages were sent to customers and 1,600 were "proactively" contacted as they were registered to the priority service offered by the company.
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The email sent to one customer said: "I want to sincerely apologise for the interruption to your water supply over the weekend of the 23 and 24 July. We know that being without water for a long period of time is a real inconvenience for our customers and I wanted to explain what happened.
"The problem was caused by a burst on a huge water pipe in the early hours of Saturday morning. This 24-inch pipe is on Church Road in Litherland and supplies water to many parts of Crosby, Litherland, Netherton, Waterloo and some of the surrounding areas.
"Due to the size of the pipe, the damage to it and initially the water in the location, the repair to longer than we wanted as we needed to make sure we could work safely at site. It was also a complex repair, requiring a large excavation and then a section of the pipe to be removed and replaced.
"Our teams continued with the repair throughout the weekend and we also used our fleet of 33 water tankers to inject water into the pipes at various locations to try and keep as many customers on with water as possible. We established bottled water stations and gave out more than 120,000 bottles of water.
"We sent over 280,000 direct messages to all customers, where we have their contact details, to keep them informed of what was happening. We also proactively contacted 1,600 customers who were registered on our Priority Service scheme.
"However, we do understand that the disruption will have had an impact on your daily routine and I would like to sincerely apologise and let you know about the compensation we will proactively send to you.
"We have lots of data loggers out across the network on our pipes so we can see who is experiencing disruption at any point in time and this helps us identify how long you were effected and what payment we need to make to you. From our data we can see that you had a continuous loss of supply for over 24 hours, which means, in line with our guaranteed standards of service, we will make a payment of £60.00.
"You don't need to do anything, the total amount of £60.00 will be transferred into the bank account that you pay your water bill with within the next 3 working days. If you have any further queries regarding this issue, please do not hesitate to call our team on 0345 072 6085 (8am-4pm Monday to Friday)."
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