Dry Weather Update

Water's Worth Saving

We’re asking for your help to reduce the water you use at home and use it wisely wherever possible. There are currently no restrictions from doing anything yet. If we all start now and work together we can help to reduce the chance of a temporary usage ban (hosepipe ban) from being implemented.

How you can help

• Use water wisely and minimise any usage where you can. Follow our summer water saving tips. Small changes can make a big difference. 
• Warm weather can cause ground movement which can lead to burst pipes. If you see what you think might be a leak, you can help us out by reporting a leak and we will do our best to get it fixed as soon as we can.
• Check your toilets for leaks. If you think you might have a leak, we may be able to fix it for free. You can report it here.

The current situation in Essex and Suffolk

Due to the prolonged hot weather, the total water levels are now lower than normal and the Environment Agency has moved the region into Drought status. We're working hard to make sure we balance maintaining supplies to all our customers while also protecting the environment.

While we’re in this period of prolonged exceptionally dry weather we're asking everyone to be careful about their water use so we can keep the water flowing to all of our customers. 

What we're doing 

We're doing our best to save water too:

• We are closely monitoring and carefully managing the situation with our water resources, as reservoir levels are lower than they would normally be at this time of year, preparing for every eventuality.
• We have increased resources and are making extra investments to achieve our best-ever performance in repairing leaks, including redeploying our employees to find and fix leaks as well as deploying new technology.
• We’ve suspending planned work so we can focus our efforts on fixing leaks across the region.

Just a quick update on our progress so far. The first two streets, Cumberland Avenue and Rylands Road are now fully complete and we are currently working along Westbury Road.

We are currently forecasting that Westbury Road should take us until mid / late June to complete, at which time we shall then be moving to Seaforth Avenue.

Here are a couple of recent photographs showing our work taking place. The  first photo shows some street work in action and the second shows some lead pipe replacement taking place where it enters the property inside a customer's kitchen cupboard . The photo shows the old existing lead pipe and the new copper pipe that is being installed to replace it.

Customer Engagement session

We would like to invite you to meet our project team on Monday 18th February 2019 between 4pm and 8pm at:

Hamstel Infant & Nursery School (front entrance) on Hamstel Road,

Southend on Sea,

Essex,

SS2 4PQ.

Please come along to our session at a time that suits you to meet us and join us for a cuppa and cake.

We’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about the lead pipe replacement scheme including our free offer to replace your lead supply pipe.

Hello and welcome to our first project update on the Southend lead replacement scheme!

I’m Jayne Hull and I’m the lead pipe replacement coordinator for Essex and Suffolk Water. I and the rest of the team will be keeping you posted with project updates. We’d also love to hear back from you. Please use the comments below or the ‘contact’ page. This is a new scheme so any feedback you have is really important to us!

Tomorrow, Wednesday 16th January and Thursday 17th January our samplers would like to take a water sample from some customer taps so you may spot us on the street or we may call at your door to request a water sample from your tap. Your patience during this time is very much appreciated. We’ll always present our identification to you if we knock at your door.

Also, anyone that has been in touch with us to request an appointment to discuss their free lead pipe replacement will be contacted this week. Our contractor, Lowman, will be phoning everyone back to arrange an appointment date.

If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to contact us to register your interest for your free lead replacement. Remember this offer is free for a limited time only! Please contact us on 01268 664118.

Thank you for visiting our community portal

Jayne