A father of a nine-month-old blocked a Thames Water van in a last-ditch effort to get the road’s pipes fixed after claiming he was left with no water for two days.
Chrix Oxley, 40, was driven to take action after the water supply to his family’s home in High Wycombe was cut off on Monday evening due to reported leaks in the road’s pipes.
The car salesman said the situation transpired when a Thames Water engineer bringing bottles of water on Wednesday morning could not offer any information about when the problem would be solved.
Mr Oxley said the engineer would not put him in touch with his manager, at which point the father took matters into his own hands and blocked the Thames Water van.
Speaking to Sky News, Mr Oxley said after blocking the Thames Water car, he repeatedly told the engineer: “Call your manager and I will move the van. Just get me someone who can take control of this.”
He added: “I just want to have a shower, clean the kid, clean her bibs, clean her sleeping stuff. It’s not unreasonable.”
His partner Sarah McCrory, 43, said she had no choice but to drive 20 miles to her parent’s home in Oxfordshire to wash their baby’s bottles and clothes.
They have not been able to bathe their nine-month-old in days and have had to give her bottled water which is “not always fit for consumption for babies”.
“It’s been really, really difficult,” she said, as she described having to clean her baby’s projectile vomit with no running water.
The Thames Water engineer called the police on Mr Oxley, but he said the police were reasonable and simply asked what he hoped to achieve from blocking the van.
He said that after a few hours and many phone calls from the engineer, a van turned up on the street and began the work to fix the leaking pipes.
However, Mr Oxley said on Thursday that he had been 62 hours with no supply, as the problem was still not fixed.
On the Thames Water website, the company has addressed the issue of leaking water: “Every day we supply 2.6 billion litres of water, but not all of that gets to our customers.
“At the moment, we leak almost 24 per cent of the water we supply. We know it’s not acceptable to be losing so much precious water and we’ve got a plan to fix it. It’s not going to be quick, but we’re making progress.”
Thames Water has been contacted for comment.
