CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING WATER OUTAGE w/c 25/5/26
2/6/26 Letter to The Rt Hon Stuart Andrew from Keith Simmons, Chairman, Eydon Parish Council
Dear Mr Andrew
I write to you on behalf of the residents of Eydon outlining the events of the latest outage of water in our Village. We have suffered more than a dozen such incidents since 2017.
Nearly all of which occur on the hottest days, when all of the press are helpfully suggesting we all should stay hydrated to add to our frustration.
It is not only we lose our drinking water, we lose our ability to carry out normal life, have a shower, flush the toilet, wash dirty clothes and dishes. We have, as you would expect – the whole range of residents, from the elderly to the very young and a number of pregnant ladies.
A lot of these registered with Anglia onto the supposed vulnerable persons register to highlight their specific needs and receive at the very least a supply of drinking water when these outages occur. The results in this regard were not satisfactory to say the least.
The events of the week as far as we are concerned was that pressure was lost in the system which meant many properties had simply no water on Monday 25 May in the evening around 7PM. It was finally returned overnight Wednesday/ Thursday morning. The village is approximately 500 feet above sea level (160 meters) and so requires a good pressure to serve all properties, the Village has approximately 350 on the electoral roll plus children so probably around 400 plus relying on the service and around 230 properties. At this point I would suggest you get a map of the area open to see the topography and road layouts.
In this instance as in all other outages we were informed that a resolution would be found and engineers were working hard to resolve the issue, and as always the outage went on far longer than indicated, this time over 2 full days in sweltering heat!
I was interviewed by BBC Northampton on the Thursday morning and that interview is an accurate description of our experiences, I attach that to the email to you.
I think there are many sides to the situation, this time the outage appears to be due to a pumping issue previous ones were due to burst pipes and by 2022 we had had so many outages Anglia were embarrassed enough to invest in a new main from Culworth to Eydon.
Which as we said is all well and good but what about the rest of the network and the pipes within the village all laid when water was connected to the Village in the 1950s – so over 70 years old.
I will forward another email exchange to you from a retired construction engineer who resides in the Village who took a keen interest in the works carried out in 2022 and has found out information about the latest outage he is Andrew Partridge and is happy for me to pass this on to you.
From our perspective our questions are – information is always patchy from Anglia – different stories told to residents at different times – nearly all optimistic and never come true.
Is it better to try and manage expectation or just tell the truth and admit you don’t know when the supply will return, NEVER in all of our outages have the first estimates come true as indeed in this instance.
Always once a fix is announced the supply inevitably goes off again, usually another burst because pressure is restored to old infrastructure. However in this case pumps tripped out again.
Incidentally one message from Anglia said after the supply was restored and it tripped again that engineers were now being sent back to the site, surely common sense would have indicated engineers staying in site to ensure this did not occur, or are they simply so short staffed they have to rush elsewhere.
Really importantly the arrangements for delivering water were a complete shambles, we recognise this is difficult, however the Company must be doing it all the time. Simply put the vulnerable persons list did not work. This must be improved and in our view water delivery to this list initiated at a much earlier stage to give these people, some of whom have serious illness, at least the chance of staying hydrated on their own cognisance.
We have a great community here and we look after each other but if a system is there to protect individuals it should work.
Then when a full scale delivery was announced this too was a shambles with some people receiving multiple delivery’s and others none. In the end whole parts of the Village were missed including some complete roads. This is simply unacceptable chaos and so adds to the sense of extreme frustration our Village feels.
Then there is the issue of compensation which must be clear, as far as we are concerned we had no water for 2 days and so every bill payer should receive the £100 compensation due to them.
Then the subject of resilience when the main was replaced we argued that a second route should be laid to protect our right to water. This was considered and declined – to use the money to invest in other improvements- we have correspondence with Peter Simpson the previous Chief Executive about this. If you still have the map open you will see Crockwell Farm on the Moreton Road – the road that leads to Canons Ashby – they still had water supplied and kindly offered residents the opportunity to collect water from there – community spirit great to see . The point I am making is that the proposed secondary route was to be along this road into the Village and maybe this would averted the outage this time. However, the lack of the secondary route leaves us all feeling vulnerable.
We have far more information we can give you and I am sure if you wish to meet within the Village to discuss matters we would be very happy to accommodate a meeting.
Yours Sincerely
Keith Simmons
Chairman Eydon Parish Council
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4/6/26 Letter from The Rt Hon Stuart Andrew to Parish Councillors
Dear Parish Councillors,
I wanted to provide a brief update following my recent meeting with senior representatives from Anglian Water, during which I raised the ongoing concerns that residents in Eydon and Upper Boddington have experienced regarding repeated water supply issues.
I made clear that residents are frustrated by the continued disruption and want more than apologies. They want better communication when problems occur and confidence that long-term improvements are being made to strengthen the local network.
Anglian Water acknowledged that communication with customers has not always been good enough and accepted that improvements are needed. The company also recognised that the local system is under pressure and confirmed that investment has been identified to improve resilience in the area.
I also raised concerns about support for vulnerable residents during periods of disruption. Anglian Water is encouraging greater awareness of its Priority Services Register, which provides additional support for customers who may need assistance during service interruptions, including those with disabilities, medical conditions, sight or hearing impairments, older residents and families with children under 12 months old.
While I welcome the commitments made during the meeting, residents will rightly judge Anglian Water by the improvements they see on the ground. I will continue to press the company to deliver on the commitments it has made.
I am grateful for the continued engagement of Eydon and Upper Boddington Parish Councils in bringing residents’ concerns forward. During our meeting, Anglian Water’s Chief Executive offered to meet directly with parish councils to discuss local concerns and the improvements residents want to see.
Please do continue to keep me updated on any ongoing issues. If the parish councils would find it helpful, I would also be pleased to help arrange a meeting with Anglian Water so that these concerns can be discussed directly.
Thank you for your continued work on behalf of your communities.
With best wishes,
Stuart
The Rt. Hon. Stuart Andrew MP
Member of Parliament for the Daventry Constituency
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Keith Simmons Chairman EPC comments to the above to the Eydon Residents
Whilst I welcome the interaction between our MP and Anglian Water and the commitments made within it, you can all rest assured that I will be pressing very firmly for a face to face meeting with the Chief Executive to enable us to press our concerns directly.
All I really see in this letter Anglia repeating requests to get added vulnerable households to the so called Priority Services Register when the actual roll out of water delivery under this scheme was a complete and utter shambles.
One way they can start to rebuild trust is by giving us all a no quibble compensation payment for the two 12 hour periods we were without a useable supply, which I calculate to be £100.
I shall respond to Stuart and also be writing directly to Mark Thurston the Chief Executive..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddp1105l20o
