Screwed by water company - help!

[MostlyFoggyTheseDays]

Hi everyone – looking for advice if anyone has fought a water company on damage to their house.

During the night in early Aug our taps and shower were forced on and flooded the bathroom. They were not on when we went to bed. We woke to a collapsed ceiling destroyed carpets, sofa, plaster etc. Emergency plumber called but they could not get to us as Severn Trent had closed all the roads around us. Bottom line plumber etc assess this was an over pressure/water hammer event caused by their works.

Rang ST first thing to report and ask for help. Also notified them that I was in chemo and had no immune system so exposure to damp and dirt on an ongoing basis was serious. None of their protocols kicked in and over a month later they have just said they are not provably liable. They have provided us with none of the data we asked for which may go to proof and are in breech of statutory requirements here.

House insurance won’t pay as they say it is a third party issue. We have legal cover with house insurance and are exploring this.

It was ST but we cannot prove it without their data which in turn may be flawed. Has anyone managed to go the distance with a water company and win? I am not at my strongest so the nature and length of any fight is a factor.

Oh no, given they've shown they want to play hardball think you need good legal advice pronto. A lawyer will have the best chance of getting the water company to produce the necessary data. Also make sure you have your timeline of events well documented with evidence and times of calls, conversations and info attached. This sounds horrendous I really hope you can get a good outcome.

Contact your MP and contact the water company again publicly, someone going through cancer treatment having their home destroyed and then being ignored by the water company won’t play well on social media.

Mechanically, how is this possible? The function of a tap and a plumbed in shower is that you open or close the gate connecting to the valve, blocking or opening the flow of water. How could an external water company override basic plumbing?

You can contact Ofwat. But I’d also complain about your house insurance, they need to sort it and then chase the water company if they think it’s them. I’d be following it up with the house insurance big time.

my neighbour set my property on fire but my insurance still paid out direct to me while deciding whether to chase my neighbour/their insurance company for money.

A sudden massive surge in water pressure can destroy the valves of taps, and I guess the shower. If the water company were doing work in an emergency they could well have introduced a lot of air into the main and this increases the pressure as it can form a type of hydraulic shockwave.

OP, can you get the plumber to write a report saying that the internal tap cartridges were destroyed?

Thanks everyone - tap is a lever and yes the plumber confirms also possible for a spike to open up the shower too - this is all possible and there is precedent.

we will go to MP, ombudsmen at the weekend and I guess the media though I have no idea how to navigate that!

I'd take it high profile and straight to the media. Interested to know why your home insurance won't cover and then look to get the costs back from the water company?

Yes we have the plumbers report. Problem is they have kept their data on surges and work done to themselves despite us asking for it - so they quote on stat to us of a 6 bar surge but we must have experienced more than that but they don’t say when and crucially where that was recorded.

So evidence wise they mark their own homework. Bastards

insurance won’t cover as they say it’s severn Trent’s fault. We tried to get them to cover and claim back to ST - subrogation of costs but they have refused. It is all so bloody unjust.

we escalated to CEOs and whilst there was a response from ST, no actual help came from it.

Surely you sue them and they produce their data as a defence?
Or the court requests the data?

Why would it only be your home that was affected though?

We are a lone house at the top of a hill - increasing the pressure issue and explaining why we were the only ones.

i have emailed again to say they are in breech of their statutory requirements regarding not disclosing the data - they are supposed to give it within 20 days and nothing in 24 days.

Would you even need to go legal, what about an FOI request

FOI not applicable here I don’t think.

you need to make a formal request under the Environmental Information Regs 2004 and because the work resulted in water ingress into your home, the details of their work - whatever they were up to - legally qualify as "environmental information" (as it concerns water levels, drainage, flooding, and infrastructure impacts).
They are legally obligated to respond to an EIR requests within 20 days (so this may be what you’ve already done?
Whatever you do don’t give up. They’ll stall and ignore you hoping you’ll just go away but if you have followed correct procedures by submitting an EIR request it puts you in a very good place as you’ve done what you were supposed to do. If you haven’t made a formal request using that system yet do so now.
persistence is key.

It seems very strange that your insurance won’t cover it and sort it out with ST, I work for a buildings supplies company. We often receive claims from insurance companies where there believe our products have failed and they have settled the claim and are they are now holding us liable.

If you’ve exhausted ST’s formal complaints process (have you actually formally complained as opposed to just asking them for infomation?) then you can ask the regulator Ofwat to get involved:
https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/regulated-companies/investigations/making-a-complaint/

Thanks and yes this is what we did. Hopefully the fact they have ignored this means we have something to hook on to with ombudsmen etc

Thank you - we had looked at ombudsmen but ofwat was not on our radar. For ST we initially reported; engaged with their insurer got nowhere got fed up, engaged CEO, engaged with complaints, got nowhere again.

All the time they have not been to the house and have left us in dirt damp and chaos. They just don’t give a toss. They know it was them, but they obviously think we cannot prove it.

I would have thought your insurance company would have to cover it and then recover the costs from ST. I specifically rang my insurance company this summer to check I was covered for fire regardless of how it started as I was worried about a neighbours grain dryer igniting our hay barn and they said they would cover fire however it started.

We thought this, we’ve tried and failed. We will try again.

Honesty both companies just want to evade and wear you down. I’m in chemo and hanging on by my fingernails to cover the kids without worrying them, trying to keep working, keep fighting the illness so maybe they see a person they can defeat by wearing them out.

I am so sorry for you

Now you said your house is on a hill I’m wondering

Are you sure the plumber is right? Because for that kind of water to affect a house on a hill seems odd. Was there an outage? I know there’s a risk of damage when they restore supply that is usually quite hard work to get water uphill

It might depend where your main is of course

But I’m wondering if it’s actually their fault or if something happened within the house and it’s just a coincidence? That would be better for you because then it would be a straightforward home insurance case.

You need to ask the insurance company to pay up or give you a deadlock letter to take to the ombudsman. Tell them you want it for the ombudsman and they may pay up. If not, complain to ombudsman.

I would honestly raise a formal complaint with your house insurance and then if still. O luck complain to financial ombudsman.. I would also contact the journalist in the MoneyMail (daily mail) who loves this sort of stuff. [email protected]

It should not be your job to chase the water company.

I would tweet like mad, both about ST and the water company. They hate bad publicity.

I would go to ofwat, I don’t work for ST but I do work for another company and my job is literally going through the pressure data in the network for situations like this (although 99.9% of the time it’s regarding low pressure). If ST are anything of a similar set up, they should have telemetry within your area they can check and see what the pressure was vs what it usually is.
If they won’t give you the data, ofwat can open a case and contact them on your behalf and request the data, even if it’s not passed to you, they will check it for any abnormality

As I say, I do low pressure not high, so I don’t know 100% on outcomes like this, but I do know we’ve replaced many a washing machine when pressure drops so it’s worth a shot

ST are notoriously difficult to deal with. We have had experience with them. Do not give up as that's what they want. Use your legal cover, document everything thoroughly and keep pushing.

This is terrible. But OFWAT are useless. I think you'd be better just focusing on the insurance company and getting it up to the FOS. Water company regulators are shit at least with the FOS you'd have a fighting chance. I'd be asking where the policy wording is for them to refuse your claim and escalate that way x