Boiling anger as residents go into sixth day without water

HUNDREDS of residents at one of the smartest addresses in Leeds are still without a water supply – five days after their taps ran dry.

They say they are living like refugees, in the middle of Yorkshire’s capital city, and have been warned there will be no respite until at least tomorrow – or even longer.

In the meantime, portable toilets have been placed outside the West Point flats, in Wellington Street, and supplies of bottled water have been provided.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Some angry residents have moved out, however, amid warnings it could be days before the water supply is restored, despite assurances last week that the problem would be resolved by Saturday.

Yesterday the agents managing the apartment blocks responded to a bombardment of complaints by issuing a detailed explanation of their problems.

In a statement, the Mainstay Group said the trouble had started, at around 8.30am last Wednesday, when a hairline crack was discovered in a riser serving all four 14-storey blocks in the development, which between them contain more than 300 apartments.

A number were long-leased for around £200,000 on completion in 2007, at the height of the heart-of-Leeds building boom. Others are rented, to a mix of singletons, couples and families, for rents ranging from around £750 a month to several thousand for penthouses.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mainstay said its caretaking staff traced the leak but added: “Within a matter of moments, the T junction that routes the mains supply through a concrete wall and up into the apartment blocks fractured, blowing a hole approx five inches diameter in the T junction.”

The statement went on to explain that engineers had to get parts which were not all readily available. They were ready to go on Friday morning, but were delayed by the need to take account of the busy period in an independent premises – understood to be a Co-op shop in the basement, where pipework runs behind fittings.

When they did finish the work, they had to wait 16 hours for a joint to set, because the pipework is plastic and the joint was made with a glue mix.

At 10am on Saturday, the water was turned back on and celebrations began. But within two hours, another section of pipework blew, flooding the basement Co-op, and supplies were turned off again.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Because of the bank holiday weekend, Mainstay has admitted, its engineers will not know until tomorrow how quickly they can get the parts to fix that.

A communal tap has been installed and portable toilets have been parked outside the building. Yorkshire Water took a look at the problem, to see if it could help, but could not – and delivered bottled water “as a gesture of goodwill”.

Many residents have moved out temporarily, staying with friends or at hotels, but the building’s insurers have ruled out repaying costs.

Residents are running a blog at waterlesswestpoint.wordpress.com which is highly critical of both Mainstay and the Co-op.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A Co-op spokeswoman said last night: “We have worked hard to ensure that any disruption is kept to a minimum. We have been working closing with the building’s management company to ensure that work is carried out safely and with minimal disruption.”

But residents were unhappy that keeping the Co-op open appeared to have taken priority over their needs. One said: “It does seem ludicrous that in the middle of Leeds, in this day and age, a population as big as a lot of villages should have to live without running water for getting on for a week.

“We must be talking about close to a thousand people living in close proximity and unable to wash, do their laundry or flush their toilets without going to a huge amount of trouble.”

Leeds Council said its officials were “keeping in touch with the situation”.