Pandemic prevents water upgrade on Biggleswade Road

Anglian Water wants to upgrade a stretch of mains pipe along Biggleswade Road, Potton, but it will require the road to be completely shut for about two months.

However, in light of the pandemic, it is following a request from Central Bedfordshire Council to put the work on hold due to the impact it could have on local businesses that are trying to get back on their feet in the midst of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19.

Central Bedfordshire Councillor Tracey Wye, said: “I raised deferring the work planned for Biggleswade Road after local businesses expressed fears a prolonged road closure would seriously affect their financial recovery post-lockdown. CBC agreed and is working with Anglian Water to find a more acceptable date to carry out the work.”

The company has also explained how lockdown, coupled with previous spells of warm weather, has caused water pressure issues as more people than usual are at home.

Given that there were a number of incidents over the past year, Cllr Wye and fellow Potton councillor Adam Zerny recently met with Anglian Water to get to the bottom of the supply problems in the Potton, Everton, Sutton and Cockayne Hatley areas.

Cllr Zerny, who first raised his concerns about “repeated water outages” with Anglian Water last autumn, said: “Residents have not had the service they need in the last year, but Anglian appear intent to get this resolved and are moving in the right direction.

“The supply problem at the end of June was caused by a burst water main in Sutton.

“Anglian is now investigating what caused this. It will take a couple of weeks but the engineers will send us a report, in layman’s terms, outlining what happened and how they will try to prevent it re-occuring.

“Anglian say problems with low pressure in recent months has also been caused by unprecedented demand during a period of hot weather where many more people were at home due to lockdown.”

Cllr Wye said: “Meeting the Anglian Water engineers online was helpful to understand the background to our recent water outages and low pressure episodes, and how they are working to prevent this in the future. Hopefully new kit to get the water tower filled more quickly will solve pressure problems in Everton while work on replacing pipes should reduce the potential of mains bursts. In the meantime, I urge residents to continue reporting problems to me or Cllr Adam Zerny, and Anglian via its website www.anglianwater.co.uk

“As water becomes an increasingly precious resource through climate change and population growth we need to become more mindful of how we use it. For example, it would be fantastic if more people were able to collect rainwater and reuse grey water, and I shall bring this up at CBC as we debate the council’s climate change strategy.”

Other issues that the councillors discussed with Anglian Water were the historic problems with low pressure in Everton and other improvement works to be carried out in Potton.

The issues in Everton are caused by its distance from the Hatley Road water tower, and engineers informed Cllr Zerny and Cllr Wye that capacity to pump water to the tower should be increased imminently, as new infrastructure works are underway to bring increased water supply to our area from the south.

Meanwhile, the roadworks on Blackbird Street and Station Road, Potton, are to replace mains pipes with new plastic pipes.

An Anglian Water spokesman said: “We were very happy to meet with the local council last week to discuss a number of issues which have affected the water supply in the Potton area. The meeting was very productive and we were able to reassure those present that we are looking into all of their concerns and to explain some of the more recent challenges we’ve faced during lockdown.

“The warm weather we experienced in May and June, combined with the majority of our customers being at home, meant we saw the demand for water rise to unprecedented levels. During one of the hottest days, we put 20% more water into supply than normal.

“In a small number of localised areas, some customers may have experienced lower water pressure than normal for a short time, simply because everyone was using more water than normal at the same time. We would also like to apologise to those customers who had no water due to a burst water main at this time.

“There are a number of operational investigations taking place across the Potton, Everton, Sutton and Cockayne Hatley areas to help prevent supply issues occurring in the future.”