Guildford’s Water ‘Island’ To Be Linked Up – CEO ‘Acutely Aware’ of Disruption Caused

Published on: 21 Nov, 2023
Updated on: 2 Dec, 2023

By Martin Giles

Guildford’s “island” water Supply Zone is to be linked up to make it more resilient and reduce the risk of interruptions to water supply experienced locally in recent weeks.

Details were included in a letter sent to Jeremy Hunt, the MP for Surrey South West, a constituency which includes Godalming.

Thames Water’s letter to Jeremy Hunt MP

In the letter, partly published on social media by Mr Hunt, Thames Water also gives more detail of the causes of the problems. Cathryn Ross, interim co-CEO, says in the letter: “Storm Ciaran affected the power supply at Shalford, Netley Mill [Shere], and Ladymead treatment works on Thursday 2nd November. Without power, the sites could no longer produce clean water so local reservoir levels dropped.

“We then saw an increase in turbidity – stirred up sediments in the water – from the river sources supplying Shalford works as a result of the heavy rainfall caused by the storm, leading to the failure of the treatment process.

“We restarted Shalford works several times between Thursday and Saturday, with staff working around the clock to restore water supplies. Ongoing turbidity, following the storm, made it impossible initially to bring the works back into operation.

“We completed an intensive operation to wash all treatment filters at the works multiple times on Sunday 5th and were able to bring the works back into operation. We gradually increased the output of the site, which is not designed to be rapidly restarted, taking care to ensure we maintained water quality standards.

“On Thursday 9th a motor failure at Ladymead water treatment works affected customers in the GU1 and GU2 areas.”

The account conflicts with answers provided to The Guildford Dragon NEWS on November 7 when a spokesperson said only two water treatment plants had been affected by power cuts and: “A power outage did not cause the issue at Shalford. It was a technical issue resulting from Storm Ciaran.”

See: Thames Water Responds to Questions and Says 90% of Affected Homes Now With Water

Planned improvements as outlined by Thames Water

To prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future the Guildford area “island” water supply zone, which currently cannot draw water from adjacent areas to mitigate the impact of individual site failures, is to be linked up as part of a “significant programme of investment”.

Within the programme, the following sites will be upgraded and improvements made:

Shalford water treatment works (cost £12.5 million)

Improved resilience to poor quality raw water making disinfection process more reliable and upgrading the flushing system to work more quickly when the treatment process is interrupted.
Work is due for completion by March 2026.

New west-to-east Guildford transfer main (cost £46 million)

A new 9km transfer pipeline to connect Pewley reservoir in Guildford to Netley Mill water treatment works near Shere. This will reduce the potential for supply outages in the zone which is only served by Netley Mill including Cranleigh. Work is planned to start in the early part of 2024. The capacity of the large-diameter trunk mains serving the south Guildford area will also be increased.

Netley Mill (Shere) water treatment works upgrade (cost £5.5 million).

To reduce the potential for unplanned outages & disinfection failure, improvements will be made by 2025 to both the disinfection system and contact tank.

Ladymead Water Treatment Works

Ladymead water treatment works upgrade (cost £8.8 million this period and £5 million by 2030)

Installing a new contact tank will remove a single point of failure at the site. We will also upgrade treatment processes, which we expect to include replacing the gas disinfection system and improving our ability to pump water from local boreholes. Ladymead is a key site supplying the centre of Guildford and part of Shalford. There will also be more resilience through the provision of new pumps and pipework to make more water available for the Guildford zone at times of peak demand.

Mousehill water treatment works (Milford) upgrade (cost, up to 2030, £6.6 million)
Improvements will increase the yield of boreholes at the site and removal of the existing single point of failure at the site’s contact tank and further enhancements to the treatment process will make the site more resilient.

Communications

The Thames Water CEO accepted that communications had not been good enough. She said: “… we have already started to look at this in-depth as part of a detailed review of the lessons we can learn from the incident.” Information was, she said, sent to stakeholders including local MPs as well as council leaders and CEOs at Waverley Borough Council, Guildford Borough Council and Surrey County Council, plus emergency planners at Surrey County Council.

Compensation

It was reiterated that under Thames Water’s Customer Guarantee Scheme customers whose water supply is interrupted unexpectedly will be automatically, within 20 working days, credited with £30 if it is not back to normal within 12 hours and an extra £30 for every further 12-hour period that the water remains turned off.

Public Meetings

Ms Ross says that Thames Water would be happy to attend a public meeting but that it should take place from mid-December following the company’s lessons learned review when representatives will be able “to offer local people the answers they are understandably looking for.”

The letter to Jeremy Hunt goes on: “We…will work with your team, Angela Richardson MP and Cllr Tim Oliver of Surrey County Council to agree a date and location where we can join together for a consolidated meeting.

“All my colleagues and I are acutely aware of how disruptive this incident has been for your constituents, and determined to ensure we do all we can to improve the service they receive.”

Responses to Guildford’s Water ‘Island’ To Be Linked Up – CEO ‘Acutely Aware’ of Disruption Caused

jim allen Reply

November 21, 2023 at 3:14 pm

In 2014 during the Local Plan public consultation -I highlighted the problem of supplying drinking water to 47,500 additonal souls being invited into the area by the housing numbers – rainfall doesn’t match future demand –

The lead councillor for infrastructure decided I was ‘anti deevlopment’ along with his Local Plan Authors decided to ignore the 80,000? comments from the public and specifically my calculations of drinking water shortgage.

In the past 3 years I have been asking of Thames Water via Water Resource South East seminars’what about the water island’ Guildford?

The response we have “A river that never stops flowing|” and “a Well than never runs dry!”

oh how wrong they all were.. 9 year on proved right again!
jim allen Reply

November 21, 2023 at 3:17 pm

In 2014 during the Local Plan public consultation -I highlighted the problem of supplying drinking water to 47,500 additional souls being invited into the area by the housing numbers – The rainfall doesn’t match future demand –
The lead councillor for infrastructure decided I was ‘anti-development’ along with his Local Plan Authors decided to ignore the 80,000? comments from the public and specifically my calculations of drinking water shortage.
In the past 3 years I have been asking of Thames Water via Water Resource South East seminars ‘what about the water island’ Guildford?
The response we have “A river that never stops flowing|” and “a Well than never runs dry!”
oh how wrong they all were.. 9 year on proved right again!
Jan Messinger Reply

November 21, 2023 at 8:27 pm

I suspect the outcome is lack of money invested by Thames Water into infrastructure required for the growing population of the area.

They can go on about the stormy weather it sounds like “wet leaves on train lines” and the “wrong type of snow” on highways. It rained heavily. It does sometimes. That should not mean, power cut or not, we should suffer the mess that occurred.

The rest of us know it has been a lack of financial investment and customers suffer the consequences. However shareholders don’t suffer from a lack of dividends do they? I bet they wouldn’t like no water for days on end like many in GU areas suffered recently.

Editor’s comment: according to the Thames Water website: “For the last five years, our investors have supported the Board’s decision not to pay any distributions to external shareholders, so we can focus on meeting our customers’ performance expectations.”
Mark Stamp Reply

November 21, 2023 at 11:33 pm

Based on this information, Thames Water had managed to get into a situation where the supply covering the Guildford area had multiple single points of failure, which in any part of critical infrastructure is a concern. How they got to this point and why they didn’t have backup power supplies for example is one question.

Thames Water clearly knew about these potential problems in advance or they wouldn’t have costed plans in place to resolve them already. So the more concerning question which needs to be answered is that they seemingly didn’t have a contingency plan about how to serve their customers in the event of these failures happening and if they did it hadn’t been shared with the local authorities so that all agencies knew what was needed.
Peter Mills Reply

November 22, 2023 at 11:14 am

Got to love that this is being turned into positive PR: “We’re investing £93 million in Guildford”. No mention that this is only because they have been forced into doing so after leaving tens of thousands of their (captive) customers without water for eight days.
- Keith Reeves Reply
  
  November 22, 2023 at 6:10 pm
  
  To be fair to Thames Water, despite their faults, these are schemes which have been planned and announced previously. They aren’t a reaction to recent events.
  - jim allen Reply
    
    November 23, 2023 at 10:35 am
    
    Actually they are current new plans: For the past three years at Water Resources in the South East WRSE they have been saying they are doing nothing in the Island Guildford.
    
    I know this because I have been asking exactltly that question. Each time they Thames Water have come back with \”River that never stops flowing” “well which never runs dry”. We need to do nothing!
    
    This reaction is less than six months old.
Sara Tokunaga Reply

November 22, 2023 at 1:58 pm

It will be interesting to see how much our bills go up to cover the cost of this. It’s a disgrace that Thames Water are still using the “storm” as its excuse.

Shalford must have got different weather conditions to the rest of us, all we got was quite a lot of rain and a bit of wind.
Alistair Smith Reply

November 23, 2023 at 4:02 pm

Timing is everthing. Major developments, eg North Street, Solum etc, depend on reliable water supplies and sewage capacity. Will these developments became stalled awaiting Thames Water?

Alistair Smith is chair of the Guildford Society
Jim Allen Reply

November 23, 2023 at 6:26 pm

Sadly this will not solve the water shortage in Guildford! It is a top up for South of Guildford, ‘if needed’. It will do nothing for actual capacity for Weyside 1550 homes (Don’t connect more than 49!) or Gosden Hill 3500 homes planned from a well “which never runs dry” from a rainfall catchment area with less fall than demand!

The problem remains!