The deputy leader of an authority serving one of the country’s most rural areas has accused a water firm of focusing its efforts on cities and providing a second rate service to others.
Councillor Gareth Dadd has challenged Yorkshire Water’s chief executive Richard Flint – who received a £279,000 bonus on top of his £412,000 salary last year – to visit a North Yorkshire market town where repeated water supply failures were causing financial distress.
Cllr Dadd said the latest cut in supply, on Saturday, had caused problems for both residents and traders in Thirsk, where he said people had endured years of issues over the water service they were paying as much for as those in large urban areas.
Among those affected was Matthew Fowler-Jones, the owner of Yorks of Thirsk cafe in the Market Place, who described the effects on his business as “horrendous”, leaving him with no option but to send staff home.
He said: “We had to shut up shop at 1pm on our busiest day of trading, it was a massive inconvenience. We lost a lot of trade.”
Cllr Dadd said alongside periods of no supply, it had become a regular occurrence for access to and around the town to be disrupted, if not at times impossible, due to “emergency” works as a result of burst water pipes resulting from poor infrastructure.
In an open letter to Mr Flint, Cllr Dadd said: “The perception locally, rightly or wrongly, is that your organisation is focused upon your densely populated areas as this will be a drive to reach your performance targets.
“In order to ensure we hear the view from the company, and to allow you personally the opportunity to reassure us here in Thirsk, I would like to extend an invitation to meet community representatives at a meeting to be held here in Thirsk at which you would be able to detail why the promised investment into secure supplies did not mitigate against loss of supply this past weekend and how you intend to avoid the financially catastrophic emergency works that we are suffering on a regular occurrence.”
In response, Yorkshire Water did not state whether Mr Flint would take up Cllr Dadd’s invitation to visit Thirsk.
A spokesperson for the firm said: “We would like to apologise for the disruption and inconvenience caused to local residents due to the burst water pipe last weekend.
“We are committed to investing in the town and are currently panning a major project which involves replacing several kilometres of water mains that will help improve water supply resilience.
“We do try and limit roadworks as well, but a proportion of this work is planned work to help us increase reliance of supply and meet water demand, rather than due to failures on the network.”
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