Shrewsbury residents have been left with flooded cellars for ten months and no telephone lines for five days after ‘ridiculous’ mistakes made by Severn Trent, it is claimed.
A letter of complaint has been sent by councillors to the water giant following work carried out on Sutton Road, in Sutton Farm, to solve a flooding problem reported in January.
Initial work was carried out on a private sewer and a fault repaired, but despite investigations, including major disruption to the main road, a substantial water leak remains.
While work on the sewer was being carried out, Severn Trent cut through a number of BT cables by mistake, leaving residents without phone lines for up to five days.
Now the company has been granted permission to dig up the road again on Monday to try to fix the leak.
Last Sunday, it is claimed workers from Severn Trent were still pumping water out of flooded cellars ten months after the problem was first reported.
Councillor Jon Tandy said: “I have lodged a letter of complaint with Severn Trent in the last week because of the ongoing saga on Sutton Road.
“They dug up the road and then closed it up when they had finished. But then they realised it was still leaking into people’s cellars so they asked for an emergency licence to dig it back up but when they did so – and got a big digger along to do the work – they cut through the BT cables. The situation is just ridiculous.”
Gill Dickinson, spokesperson for Severn Trent, said: “We have carried out detailed investigations to try to identify the source of this flooding but although a number of avenues have been explored, we have not been able to pinpoint the cause.
“While it’s important that we repair the leak, unfortunately there is no guarantee that this will resolve the cellar flooding issue. We do experience this kind of issue occasionally. Sometimes the problem lies with ground water or other factors entirely unrelated to our water or sewer network. We would like to reassure customers that we’ve taken all appropriate steps to try to solve the problem.”
By David Seadon