Thames Water main burst closes schools and disrupts supplies across London and Surrey

A burst Thames Water main in West Molesey, Surrey, forced schools to close and disrupted water supplies across parts of south London and Surrey on Monday 28 September. Thames Water said about 6,000 properties still had no water or low pressure after an earlier estimate of up to 15,000 affected properties.

The company said engineers were working on the broken pipe and rerouting water to reduce the impact. It said repairs were progressing but would take some time, leaving affected households and businesses without a confirmed time for a full return to normal service.

Schools close as supplies run low

The Guardian reported closures at Esher College, Kingston Grammar School, Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School, Thames Ditton Infant School, and Hollyfield School and Sixth Form Centre in Surbiton. Esher College, which has about 2,000 students, said its KT10 campus was closed on Monday because of the major water outage.

A message to Hollyfield parents, reported by the Guardian, said the school still had water but was using it faster than its supply could replenish. It expected its water to run out by lunchtime and said students could not safely remain on site. The closures show how an interruption in water supply can affect schools even before their taps run completely dry.

Where supplies were affected

Thames Water said properties across five south London boroughs and two Surrey boroughs had no supply or low pressure. Its list of postcode areas that could be affected included CR4, KT1, KT2, KT3, KT5, KT6, KT7, KT8, KT10, KT12, SM4, SW16, SW17, SW18, SW19, SW20, TW10 and TW16. The list describes potential reach; it does not mean every property in each postcode lost water.

The Independent reported that Thames Water initially believed up to 15,000 properties were affected on Monday morning. The company later reduced its estimate to about 6,000. Thames Water also said customers in Surbiton should begin to see supply return, although pressure might remain lower than usual while repairs continued.

The Guardian reported that people in the community began losing water at about 5am. Monica Harding, the MP for Esher and Walton, said she understood the burst main had been leaking at 750 litres a second early on Monday. That rate was Harding’s account; the available reports did not establish it as a measurement confirmed by Thames Water.

Repairs and support

Thames Water said its specialist team was at the site and engineers were making progress on the repair. The company said it was rerouting water to limit the effect on customers, delivering water to those on its Priority Services Register, and planning bottled water stations. Locations for those stations had not been confirmed in the reports.

Harding called for supplies to be restored urgently and for vulnerable communities to be protected. She said she wanted to establish what had happened once water was flowing again. Paul Kohler, the MP for Wimbledon, said he had contacted Thames Water after reports of outages in Wimbledon, New Malden, Raynes Park and Morden.

Harding also raised concern that underinvestment and poor regulation might contribute to incidents of this kind. That was her concern, rather than an established explanation for this burst. The Guardian reported accounts that a contractor had struck the pipe with a digger, but its report did not confirm that account with Thames Water. The cause of the rupture therefore remained unresolved in the available reporting.

Thames Water apologised to affected customers and said it would post further updates on its website. Its reported statements did not give a time when all customers would have normal service again. For schools, residents and businesses still affected, the immediate questions were how quickly engineers could repair the main and when supply and pressure would recover.