Thames Water has been slammed for repeated failures in dealing with hundreds of leaks and mains bursts across the borough.

The borough's Green Party has lifted the lid on the fact the Council has fined the company more than £200,000 over the past four years linked to 350 separate incidents.

The fines are issued when utility firms, such as Thames Water, fail to deal with incidents in a timely way, so leaving residents victim to disruption, most often jams on the borough's roads.

Further fines are in the pipeline following disruption on many of the borough's roads in recent weeks linked to leaks and mains bursts that have created sink holes on key routes.

For example, in November, a burst water main on the Petersham Road, Ham, forced a major road closure for days. Residents were stunned at the lack of urgency to repair what became known as the 'Ham hole'.

Just last month, a sink hole suddenly opened up on the Kingston Road, Teddington. One driver had a lucky escape when they hit the hole and their tyre burst.

advertisement

Richmond town centre has also suffered a series of bursts and road closures in recent weeks.

A failure of temporary traffic lights around Thames Water works in the middle of Twickenham caused horrendous jams, while a burst water main in Hampton Hill caused enormous disruption.

Details of the fines and failures have emerged at a time that Thames Water is pursuing controversial proposals to take up to 75m litres of water a day from the River Thames upstream of Teddington Lock and replace it with treated effluent from the Mogden sewage treatment works.

The multi-million pound scheme has triggered opposition from thousands of residents, local councillors and MPs.

The Green Party argues that the failures by Thames Water to tackle leaks and mains bursts in the borough and across its operating area means consumers will find the company hard to trust.

Green Party councillor for South Richmond, Cllr Chas Warlow, raised the issue of repeated failures by Thames Water at a recent borough council meeting.

He asked: "What assessment is being made of the impact – financial, environmental and inconvenience – of burst pipes, broken drains and sink holes caused by Thames Water (TW) across the borough on the Council, businesses and residents, and how many fines and for how much, have been levied on TW in the last four years?"

advertisement

The Lib-Dem chair of the Environment, Sustainability, Culture and Sports Committee, Cllr Julia Neden Watts, confirmed fines of more than £200,000 have been levied.

She said: "It is not possible to ascertain the financial or environmental inconvenience on both the Council's businesses and residents as a result of Thames Water street works.

"We can issue fines on a utility for unreasonably prolonged or missed managed works under section 74 of the New Roads and Streetworks Act 1991. Over the last four years the council has issued 350 of these fines on Thames Water with the value in excess of £200,000."

The deputy leader of the Greens on the borough council, Cllr Andrée Frieze, told Nub News: "Residents are already hugely concerned about proposals by Thames Water to extract water from the Thames above Teddington Lock and replace it with treated sewage.

"This high number of fines for bad management of road works by Thames Water will further reduce trust in the company, whose poor management of burst pipes and leaks across our borough has so inconvenienced residents."

A Thames Water spokesperson said: "One of our biggest priorities is to turn around our performance and our shareholders have recently approved an additional £2billion into the business so we can improve outcomes for customers, leakage and river health.

"We know that our customers and businesses in Richmond expect us to carry out repairs in timely manner and we're sorry when this isn't the case.

"We're aiming to do better, which is why we also have an extensive capital programme to help us fix more leaks in the future. In the next 3 years we will spend over £55m installing dynamic pressure management helping to modulate pressure across our network for varying demands, helping reduce leakage. And in the next 3 years we will spend close to £200m on replacing water mains."

advertisement