Am I being unreasonable to feel a bit annoyed? (a long tale)

[AE-NMidlands]

Reminds me of Tesla.

look for the similarities: Top-down authoritarian management: arrogant owner or Board of Directors who are driving it for their own ends regardless of their social obligations or any concern for the sustainability of the business.

[Oldgreybeard]

I'm not a great fan of public ownership in general, but a couple of things are making me change my views. The first was the sensitivity of our energy supplies to global events, and the way that commercial interests almost certainly caused greater swings in energy prices, as well as heavily influencing decisions on things like future generation type and capacity. The war in Ukraine rammed home the need for greater resilience and far less reliance on foreign governments who could hold countries to ransom through some key companies they own or control. The more recent has been my experience with Wessex Water, and the way they seem to use every trick in the book to avoid doing what they are supposed to do, be that sort my water problems or the bigger problems of their failures to deal with sewage responsibly.

The argument against public ownership has always been focussed on value for money. The shift in politics (and I have no desire to make this thread political) in the 1980s emphasised that privatisation would give consumers better services at a lower price. I think we were very much sold a pup on that, and that we now need to reconsider whether it makes sense to have services that are essential to life, like water and energy, in the hands of companies that really have no regard for life or the harm they cause, as long as they make money.

I've almost completed a summary of all the significant events, since first discovering these water leaks in 2013, to the events of this morning, and intend to send copies to the CEO and the Ops Director. I was an Ops Director for a few years (nothing to do with water or utilities) and things like this did focus my attention, not least because a chunk of my pay depended on them being resolved speedily. I'm hoping the same may be true within Wessex Water.

I know that my major problem was that people rarely told me of problems, they tried hard to cover things up and not have them escalate for fear of getting a bollocking. I spent a lot of time trying to convince managers that the sooner they shared a difficult problem they had, the sooner we could all work to try and fix it. I suspect the culture in WW may be one of hiding bad news from the directors, as that often seems to be the way a lot of big companies operate.

[Oldgreybeard]

Action now taken, the threshold where my anger and frustration has exceeded my natural unwillingness to be seen as a nuisance has been passed after today's shenanigans. A friend from the Parish Council is a solicitor, so I rang her. She put me in touch with a colleague that deal with civil claims, and who has agreed to look at the paperwork I have. I emailed it all over, with my draft summary, and she got back in touch with me this evening (out of hours, which bodes well). Her immediate view is that I stand a good chance of getting a fair part of the costs we've incurred from the water damage back. She doubts that Wessex Water will bother to put up more than token resistance given the weight of the written evidence from their own inspectors going back to 2013.

Her fees seem reasonable, but her first suggestion is a cheaper one that I've already had from here, email the CEO the summary, copy it to customer services, and include a note that this is now in her hands as the solicitor acting for me. Her view is that this will almost certainly provoke a rapid response and resolution. She didn't go into specifics, but did say that my experience with this company was far from untypical, and that dealing with water damage claims was bread and butter work for her side of her business.

As Captain Paddy Mayne was reputed to say, "Let the games begin!"

I have to say I feel a hell of a lot better having finally decided to do something positive. It wasn't until I came off the phone to the lady earlier this evening that I realised how wound up this thing has been making me over the past few weeks.

[AGT]

Hope the outcome is positive for you, and you feel less stress in the morning!

[Oldgreybeard]

Hope the outcome is positive for you, and you feel less stress in the morning!

Would you believe it if I said I've just come off the phone from someone at Wessex Water, who called me the instant he got in the office at 08:30 this morning and is arranging to come over and resolve all of the long standing problems with leaks as quickly as they can?

An inspector is on his way here now to survey the pipe and take copies of all my records, with a view to trying to effect a temporary repair of the worst leaks today, if possible.

This is the first time in nearly a decade that Wessex Water have actually contacted me!

Why on earth it took an email to their CEO and the subtle threat of legal action I do not know. Right now I'll just be glad to get the problems fixed, hopefully once and for all.

[Oldgreybeard]

Wessex Water have been, used a contact microphone to find the source of the most prominent leak, and marked the road for their repair team. He asked if I knew what the white cross was, when he was spraying his blue line marker on the road in exactly the same place. I said that was the marker I'd put there a couple of days ago to show where I thought the leak was.

The chap that came out was great, and did comment that it was a shame they couldn't fix all the problems in a pipe in one go, rather than having to come out multiple times. He hinted that it didn't used to be like this, and that in the past if a rotten pipe was found they would just replace it and so prevent future problems. Company policy now is to avoid replacing pipes if they are still able to be repaired, even if that means that pipes (and road surfaces) end up as a patchwork of repairs that most probably won't last that long.

[Moxi]

Thats because they are monitored for leak repairs by OFWAT, so why repair 1 leak by tearing out the old pipe and fixing it correctly when you can fix 12 leaks on the same pipe for about the same money but a better OFWAT score?

Thats the problem with quangos they drive inefficiency.

Moxi

[Mr Gus]

Whatever happens, sue the crap out of them & drag everyone into it you think will be of use, deride the quango scenario publicly, your threat has made them jumpy, act o n it, roll like a pig luxuriating in cool matter, make them learn, make them not be such a bunch of f***nuts, take ofwat down as part of the funeral pyre ..which because of bad practise could not be extinguished.

Speak to the local fire brigade, ask what added risk that 10+ year wait would have done to anyone on that main whose house was on fire.. might reveal some salient matter to rub noses in.

[Oldgreybeard]

Whatever happens, sue the crap out of them & drag everyone into it you think will be of use, deride the quango scenario publicly, your threat has made them jumpy, act o n it, roll like a pig luxuriating in cool matter, make them learn, make them not be such a bunch of f***nuts, take ofwat down as part of the funeral pyre ..which because of bad practise could not be extinguished.

Speak to the local fire brigade, ask what added risk that 10+ year wait would have done to anyone on that main whose house was on fire.. might reveal some salient matter to rub noses in.

Interesting thoughts, but the issues with the pipe are complex, and right now what I may have believed (and been told by Wessex Water in writing in 2013) may or may not be true. The pipe connects to a water main in the adjoining road and supplies four houses, three close together at top of the lane, not far from the main, the other is our nearest neighbour the other side of us from those houses further up. In other words, this pipe runs right past us and terminates at our neighbours water meter and stop cock further down the lane.

Prior to a change in the law some time after privatisation (but definitely before 2013) this pipe would have been a private pipe, with responsibility for its repair and maintenance falling to the owners of the houses it supplies. In the case of the long length of pipe that is the root cause of all the problems in recent years, that responsibility would have fallen on our neighbour, not the old water board or Wessex Water in the early days of privatisation. It's not a water main, so has no fire-fighting capability; in the jargon of the water industry it is a communication pipe.

The current regulations defining the responsibilities for various pipes is detailed on the OFWAT site, here: https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/households/sup ... ply-pipes/

The water companies are now not allowed to connect a new customer to a communication pipe (but they were in the past and this was very common practice on housing developments). The water companies are now only allowed to connect a new customer directly to a water main, hence the very high cost of running a new pipe up the whole length of our lane, in parallel with the old pipe, if we had wanted a mains water supply.

During my conversations with WW yesterday, the status of the pipe was raised again, because they have now found that they have a shut-off valve at the top of the lane, close to where the recent repair was made. They are suggesting that the pipe along our lane may still be a private supply pipe, so not their responsibility. In the past (in July 2013) they inspected the area, found that the stop cock outside our neighbours place has Wessex Water cast into the lid, and at that time assumed that this meant they had responsibility for the whole length of this pipe (as suggested in the OFWAT guide linked to above). The key thing seems to be where the stop cock is located - they may argue that their recently fitted valve at the top of the lane is now the stop cock

I very strongly suspect that their next move may be to try and disown responsibility for this pipe, on the basis that there is a second shut-off valve at the top of the lane. I know that the shut-off valve at the top of the lane was installed around 2011, after the change in the law, so my view is that the pipe causing the problems remains a Wessex Water responsibility.

I'm due to meet with a manager from WW next Wednesday, and I very strongly suspect that the responsibility for this pipe will be on his agenda. The great shame is that the lady that had lived in the cottage at the top of the hill, right next to where the new shut-off valve is located, passed away a couple of years ago. I know she kept records of everything that went on, as she showed me them, years ago, whilst warning me about dealing with WW. I bet those records are now long gone, though.

[Bugtownboy]

Sloping shoulder time for WW

We had a similar moment of enlightenment with our burst/WW experience.

While they were trying to identify the leak in the road/footpath outside our property, they wanted to identify the stop tap. I showed them the water meter, then said - oh, there’s another one buried 3’ down next to the 8’ wall that could be water related ?

By 3’ down, the metal cover was 3’ down

Anyway, what we thought was a supply to us actually turned out to be a supply to seven other houses in the valley below us, about 60 yards from the supply in the road.

So the 1” internal diameter pipe supplied us and the other houses - our water meter was on a spur off this.

WW had no idea where the supply went, neither did we. It was only when the houses below us squealed we realised they were on the same supply. Doh !

But, I said, isn’t that supply inadequate for all these houses ?

“Probably, but it is what it is”

What if the pipe fails under our garden but after our spur ?

“ You have a responsibility to allow access or we get a court order”

So where does the responsibility for the supply on our land to other houses lie ?

“Not us” said WW.

In mitigation, they did say ours was a fairly straightforward supply issue where older properties are involved - the houses below us date to the 16-1700’s.

Even with the pipes in the road, there was no reference of where and how they ran.

This is one element of our infrastructure - considering so much of it dates back to Victorian times (or before), it’s an absolute time bomb that I sense just isn’t being recognised.