Anglian Water donates £5k to Sandy community as apology for burst water main during heatwave

The damage occurred on Grange Lane, Cople, during the July heatwave to a mains that supplies the town and its surrounding areas, while there were also issues with an airlock that needed to be fixed.

The money has been gifted to Sandy Town Council and it will decide which local projects are most deserving of the funds.

A town council spokesman said: "Residents around Sandy will remember being left without water for more than two days around the end of July, due to a burst water main and subsequent airlock.

"Due to the inconvenience caused, Anglian Water decided that as well as compensating individual customers, it would also donate £5,000 to the community, through Sandy Town Council, which it sees as best placed to allocate the funds appropriately.

"At a council meeting on Monday (August 22), members welcomed the generous donation on behalf of the community. Councillors understand the importance of using these funds in a way which is appropriate and which the whole town could benefit from.

"After considering some suggested projects through which the funds could be used to help the community, the council agreed to take some more time to decide on the best use for the donation."

An Anglian Water spokesman said: “We remain incredibly sorry for the inconvenience caused to our customers in Sandy, who were without water recently due to a burst water main in the area. We know it couldn’t have happened at a worse time during the hot weather.

"Our teams worked around the clock to fix the issue, but it was a complex job and took longer than we’d anticipated to get things back up and running, as an air lock in the network was stopping water from reaching our customers. Once this was released, we were able to get water back to customers and provided bottled water in the meantime.

"In recognition of the disruption and community impact we provided a gesture of goodwill payment to Sandy Town Council. We were in touch with the council to make arrangements for those payments and so that they could best decide how to use the funds for local community benefit."