Four months ago, a water pipe burst in our street and flooded the bathroom in our lower-ground-floor flat. The damage forced us to move out and we are still waiting for Thames Water and its insurer for a repair. When the burst pipe was discovered, the mains water was not shut off and it was five days before engineers came. By then, water had flooded a large area of the street and leaked through the light fittings in our bathroom. A dehumidifier made little difference and, three weeks later, we were moved into an apart-hotel while builders stripped the bathroom.
That was two months ago and no one has returned since. In the meantime, our landlord commissioned a survey, which recommended a programme of works, but repeated calls to Thames and its insurer have been ineffective. I suffered a miscarriage shortly after the flood, and believe severe stress was a factor. I am now seven weeks pregnant, and we are desperate to return home. Our 81-year-old landlord also had his health affected by the worry.
AH, London
Your log of interactions shows numerous calls and emails, most of which were either ignored, or asked you to wait for an update. Nonetheless, Thames Water claims it has been in “regular contact” and was unaware of your pregnancies. The most effective contact appears to have happened after I waded in. Contractors were appointed and you were told the work would take three weeks. You moved back four weeks later.
The company says initial delays were due to the complexity of the repair and council bureaucracy, and the water supply could not be shut off because of vulnerable residents in the street. The delays in repairing your flat, or confirming a timescale were, it says, because of the time it took to dry out. That doesn’t explain a month-long lapse between it declaring the bathroom dry and scheduling remedial works. Thames Water has agreed to pay £3,500 for the four months of rent you had to fork out on an uninhabitable flat.
Customers with problems should follow the company’s official complaints procedure on its website. If there is no satisfactory resolution, they can ask the Consumer Council for Water to intervene.
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