Buisnesses struggle to stay afloat
The burst mains water pipe beneath Caledonian Road last month marked Thames Water’s seventh major system failure in the borough over the last decade, IslingtonNow data reveals.
Floods on Camden Passage, Offord Road, Northdown Street, Hornsey Road, Pentonville Road, Canonbury Street since 2016 all stem from faulty Thames Water infrastructure below ground.
Six fire engines attended the scene on the 24 February after the 36-inch trunk main burst around 2pm, flooding 350 metres of the Islington thoroughfare. The burst pipe was a stretch of the UK’s largest water provider’s approximately 12,800km of Victorian infrastructure beneath the capital.
Ali Ahmed who works at the local Alibaba Pound Saver told IslingtonNow this week how the flood has cost his business £50,000 due to water damage.
The owner of Sunflower Bakery, Paul O’Brian, who also chairs the Cally Trade Association, said: “These small business down the road have no turnover and no money from insurance claims. The road has now been closed for two weeks; my prediction is that a lot of the businesses on this road will never reopen.”
Kane Emerson, former chair of the Barnsbury Estate Residents Group, said: “Private renters completely fall through the cracks when you have an incident like this. If you’re private renter, private landlords won’t necessarily be giving you much support, and private renters do not tend to have any insurance.”
Emerson organised a fundraiser on 9 March raising more than £650 for families and businesses. Emerson told IslingtonNow: “The fundraiser showed the strength of community and how people can unify around something that’s quite an awful event”.
In a letter to the CEO of Thames Water, Chris Weston, Islington Council Leader Una O’Halloran said: “This could have been prevented, had it not been for years of Thames Water neglect and inaction.”
“How many bursts does it take? Do you want to wipe us out? Apologies are not good enough. We want action,” she added.
A water scrutiny committee raised concerns over the age and condition of water infrastructure in Canonbury ward last January, pointing to two 36-inch mains pipes installed in the 1870s.
In August, the pipes burst, flooding forty homes in the ward which many residents are still unable to return to seven months later.
Sasha Donaldson, whose home on Cedar Court was flooded said in a council meeting last month: “They were working on Canonbury Street and then we got flooded. They were working on Pentangle Road and then they got flooded on Caledonian Road. Is there a coincidence? I would like to know.”
Thames Water has the highest leakage rate of any water supplier in England according to Ofwat, the UK’s water services regulation authority, with nearly a quarter of water put into supply lost through leaks in its network.
Ofwat also found that across the water industry just 0.13% of pipes are being replaced per year, far below the level regulators expected.
Since the water industry was privatised in 1989, over £7 billion has been paid out to Thames Water shareholders. The company was in the High Court this week, seeking £3.3 billion bail the company out of £16 billion debt.
Thames Water could not be reached for comment but in a previous statement said: “We are looking to replace approximately 60km of pipe in Islington. We will carry out these works, but we face several challenges meaning we cannot give precise timelines”.
Phin Hubbard is a City St Georges student on the Newspaper Journalism MA. He works casual shifts at the Sunday Times.