A Newcastle couple forced to live in a caravan outside their flooded home for two months have demanded answers over why their pipes have repeatedly burst.
Alan Coleman and Terry Thoburn’s house in High Heaton was left uninhabitable after a plumbing joint ruptured last October, the third time that they have suffered such a burst in nine years. They say that the devastating ordeal has left them “frightened” to leave their home in case of another catastrophic leak and are calling on Northumbrian Water to pay out compensation.
The pair are convinced that high water pressure is the cause of their and other locals’ problems on the Victoria Glade estate. But the water firm insists that there are “no operational issues” on its network and that its pressure levels are “not excessive”. It has instead blamed alleged failures with the property’s own pipework, which the residents dispute.
Alan and Terry, who moved back into their Brownlow Close home on December 19 after renovation work, were taking a short holiday in Whitby when they received a call from a neighbour on October 23 last year to tell them that water was pouring out of their front door.
The couple immediately rushed home but virtually the entire ground floor of the property had been severely damaged by the time a Northumbrian Water emergency plumber arrived. They estimate the cost of repairing structural damage to the home, rebuilding damaged flooring and walls, replacing saturated carpets and damaged appliances to come in at more than £20,000.
After they moved into their caravan outside the house and that drew the attention of other neighbours, they learned that more people had also experienced similar issues. More than 30 residents of Brownlow and Garstin Close have now signed a petition Alan launched calling for Northumbrian Water to reduce the pressure “by whatever means necessary” to ensure there are “no further floods, bursts, drips, exploding taps, or other problems caused by the dangerously high 6 bar water pressure to our houses”.
Alan said that the anxiety caused by the repeated floods has left his mental health “shattered” and that he was now “frightened to leave the house unattended”. Northumbrian Water measured the pressure at Alan and Terry’s house at 5.8 bar and the company now says that a total of 13,897 nearby properties, 24% of the area’s water network, are supplied with a water pressure of 6.0 bar or higher.
Alan, a retired former Your Homes Newcastle worker who has lived in Brownlow Close for 32 years, said: “Our neighbours were really supportive of us and were asking what had happened, so we explained and then discovered that almost every house on this street and Garstin Close had problems too. We did not know there were such widespread problems until people saw us living in the caravan. Now I have set up this petition and there are lots of houses saying that they have also had water pressure-related problems.”
The aftermath of a flood at Alan Coleman and Terry Thoburn’s house in Brownlow Close, High Heaton, Newcastle
(Image: Alan Coleman.)
Water regulator Ofwat states that providers “should make sure that high water pressure does not cause damage to a customer’s property if the customer’s fittings meet normal standards”.
Northumbria Water said that pressure levels in High Heaton were within what it considered a normal level. The company indicated that the geography of the city means that if it were to reduce the pressure in the area, it would drop too low for properties at higher ground.
A spokesperson for Northumbrian Water said: “We have thoroughly investigated the concerns from the homeowner and have found that there are no operational issues on our public water network. The water pressure for the High Heaton area is regularly checked and monitored. It is not excessive and is in line with around a third of our properties within the whole of the Tyneside area.
“The issues the customer has had previously with flooding has been down to failures on their own internal pipework. Pipes that run from the property boundary into the property, including any internal pipes, are the responsibility of the homeowner and not Northumbrian Water.
“We have in the past replaced some of the customer’s pipework as a gesture of goodwill. This includes replacing plastic fittings and pipework with brass fittings and copper piping, to try and help, and giving them advice on other improvements that they could make to their own plumbing.”
Local councillor Greg Stone says that, if high water pressure is the cause of the problems, he has concerns that issues could spread elsewhere. The Liberal Democrat told ChronicleLive: “There is clearly a particular concentration of issues around Victoria Glade. It took 30 years for the problems to crop up here and I wonder whether we are going to have more elsewhere in the future.
“I have asked what scope there is for Northumbrian Water to put in an engineering solution for the area to reduce the pressure. I can’t speak for them, but I get the impression from their response to me that that is not something they are looking to consider because it will cost quite a bit of money to do it. Instead, they are putting the burden on the households affected.”
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