Wessex Water issues boil notice over sub-standard water quality

Wessex Water has been forced to issue a boil notice to 250 of its Somerset customers after a routine test identified concerns over the quality of its water, the company said on Wednesday.

The water company told Utility Week that “there’s nothing to suggest that this is cryptosporidium” which recently dogged United Utilities (UU) for almost a month, at an estimated cost as high as £20 million.

The company’s water supply general manager Nigel Martin stopped short of explaining the cause of the water quality concern in a statement, saying only that it the company had performed a test in which “a water sample didn’t meet our standard”.

“Therefore, as a precautionary measure we are asking some customers to boil their water and have supplied bottled water to those affected,” he said.

“Once we are completely satisfied that the water quality is back to its normal high standard we will inform customers that they no longer need to boil water,” Martin added.

The boil notice comes just days after UU finally lifted its Lancashire boil notice, the scale of which dwarfs Wessex Water’s relatively limited water quality issues.

UU’s boil notice saw 300,000 homes affected, is estimated to cost the company at least £15 million in compensation claims alone and has caused a multi-million pound maintenance project to be postponed by a year just two weeks before work was due to start

Wessex Water said it will be providing customers with regular updates and will provide additional bottled water to affected customers if required.

The boil notice will remain in place at least until Friday 11 September.