Raging Dunblane residents are demanding answers over claims it took almost a month for raw sewage leaking on to the streets to be dealt with.
The leaking sewage was first noticed by locals on Argyle Way on January 3, with the issue picked up by Dunblane and Bridge of Allan councillor Alasdair Tollemache three days later.
However, despite the issue being raised with Scottish Water by frustrated locals and Cllr Tollemache, officials remained adamant that it was not an emergency and reportedly said material flowing into the streets was likely ground water.
Following site visits from contractors across the intervening period, the work to fix the sewage flow eventually began on Sunday (January 29) - leading to frustrations about a poor response to the initial reports.
Cllr Tollemache - who worked for Scottish Water for 25 years before his retirement - labelled the customer service provided by the organisation as “shocking” and hailed the work of locals on the ground for keeping the pressure on.
He added: “I have been an advocate for Scottish Water since I left nearly 20 years ago.
“However, the way they have handled this incident is, in the words of a constituent, “shocking”. Their response to the serious sewage leak on Argyle Way is woeful.
“After a week of sewage running down the street (in a lesser extent for much longer) it was finally resolved on Sunday night.
“The community needs urgent answers on why residents were subjected to this level of service and why as their representative I had to phone and email multiple times to finally get an adequate response.”
Meanwhile, a Dunblane Community Council spokesman labelled Scottish Water’s response to the situation as “woeful” and told the Observer: “The community council are very disappointed at the lack of any urgent response to the sewage outbreak from Scottish Water.
“It took 23 days from the first report for them to stop the sewage flow down Argyle Way which increased in volume as the days went by.
“This is totally unacceptable, we will vigorously pursue Scottish Water to get detailed answers on why the response took so long, lessons must be learnt as this cannot happen again.”
A Scottish Water spokesperson said they attended the site and jetted the pipe clear, before further investigations identified an issue, with re-instatement of the road anticipated by the end of this week.
They added: “We sincerely apologise for the length of time this has taken since first reported to us, however we can assure customers that investigations have been ongoing to identify the issue and we are now working to get this resolved.
“We worked closely with Stirling Council and the community council to deliver our sewer flood alleviation project and we will continue to liaise with them during this repair.”
