Yorkshire Water told to pay compensation to customers 'without delay' following 'huge disruption' caused by burst water pipe

Watchdog Ofwat and the Consumer Council for Water said the firm "failed" residents in 12,700 homes in Goole which were affected by a burst water pipe between October 27 and November 13 last year.

Bottled water was only supplied to 44 homes out of more than 600 on the “priority service register” which includes the elderly, disabled and those with young children and communication had been poor.

Although £37,000 has been paid in compensation, the water firm had still not confirmed whether other customers would get anything.

Customers had experienced a mix of problems on and off over the period, including low water pressure, murky and gritty water, or no water at all after what Yorkshire Water described as a “complicated operational incident” at their water tower.

Residents said they’d struggled to go about their daily lives, many were unable to bathe, do household chores, or turn their heating on during the start of the winter period.

Lynn Parker, senior director for casework, enforcement, and customers at Ofwat said: "Goole residents faced a huge disruption to their lives over the course of a fortnight as we approached winter.

"Yorkshire Water didn't fully communicate to customers what was happening or why, they didn't do enough to support customers to access bottled water and, on top of all of that, they have dragged their feet when it comes to customers getting compensation. Clearly this is not good enough."

Jenny Suggate, Interim Director of Policy, Research & Campaigns at CCW said they were “very disappointed” that four months on Yorkshire Water had yet to address the issue of compensation for all of those affected. She said: “Customers deserve better. Yorkshire Water must now bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion, and we will challenge the company to ensure this happens.”

Yorkshire Water said fixing the problems at the water tower had taken longer than they would have liked. They’d not “purposely failed” to deliver bottled water to customers, but only given it to the “small subset” affected by low pressure or no water at all at peak periods.

They’d identified “learnings” which they had taken on board.

They’d paid out £37,000 so far, and set up a community fund which local groups could apply to by way of apologising to affected residents. A statement said they were still working through a process to determine how much compensation to give other customers: "This process, which has been approved by Ofwat and is one that we have been applying to customer incidents since 2006, has taken longer than anticipated but we’re hoping to get this sorted in the coming weeks.

"This is not us dragging our heels, we have processes like this one in place so we can make sure we’re fairly giving compensation particularly as customers across the town experienced varying levels of inconvenience.”