Dwr Cymru Welsh Water will pay compensation to the hundreds of households left without water supply after a 'freeze-thaw' caused mass outages for days across west Wales. Parts of Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire lost their water supply as early as Saturday, December 17, and as of Thursday morning 200 properties were still disconnected.
But the water supplier has now announced that it will pay compensation to the people affected. In a letter to customers, shared by Elin Jones MS on social media, chief executive Peter Perry said: "I would like to apologise sincerely for the recent loss of water supply you have experienced.
"I appreciate that this has been a major inconvenience and frustration for you, your families and your community. We are writing now to make clear to customers that we will be going beyond our regulatory obligations in order to compensate customers, because we recognise we have failed to meet customers' expectations."
READ MORE: Residents left for days without tap water claim they've had no support
Mr Perry, who said "lessons have and will be learned," from the incident, added that Welsh Water maintained water supplies to 99% of customers across its operating area. He said the length of the outages could be explained by the number of repairs being made on the network, the number of burst pipes on customers' own properties, and the poor weather and rural nature of the area.
In the letter, he promised compensation payments for customers affected by the outages. This is what he promised:
- Household customers will receive £70 per day they were without water, as compensation and to cover 'any additional costs... such as the purchase of bottled water.
- This means, for instance, a household without water for four days will get £280. This will be paid automatically to account holders early in the new year but "it could take a few weeks to process."
- Businesses will be "compensated for every day that they were without supply and any verifiable losses they incurred as a result of the supply failures."
- Welsh Water will write to these businesses "early in the new year" to outline what they'll receive and how they can claim for additional losses.
Mr Perry pointed out that the average annual household water and sewerage bill is £446. He also confirmed that Welsh Water is "undertaking a detailed review of the incident."
He said: "It is clear that there are a number of areas where we could and should have done better - especially in terms of the provision of alternative water supplies in rural areas, timely communication with customers on the issues we were facing and local updates on the progress we were making to rectify these issues. I apologise sincerely for these shortcomings."
READ NEXT:
Christmas shopping causes queues, delays and congestion at retail parks
Woman dialled 999 asking for pizza — but call handler knew there was something more to it
Seagulls blamed for causing leaks in spectacular apartments overlooking Welsh bay
Successful property developer led double life as a drug dealer
