A mum-of-two recently hit with a water bill for nearly £16k after a leak went undiscovered for months has had the debt wiped. Claire Fitzpatrick, from Sycamore Close in Bridgend, first realised something was wrong last summer when the amount she owed to Welsh Water "suddenly and unexplainably shot up" into four figures.
And, upon checking her meter - located on the pavement outside her house - she saw the numbers on the dials were "spinning at 100 miles an hour." Several attempts were then made by water board engineers to locate the source of the leak by digging up Claire's driveway, but each time proved unsuccessful.
In the end, with the tally continuing to rise, Claire was faced with somehow paying back a staggering £15,833.11 after Welsh Water explained the problem was her responsibility, not theirs. The company asserted that the issue wasn't to do with their pipework "but instead on the internal pipework of her property."
