'Major incident' in Surrey as thousands lose water supply

Thames Water has apologised to those who are affected and said Shalford treatment works in Guildford had technical issues "caused by Storm Ciarán".

Bottled water stations were set up in Artington Park and Ride in Old Portsmouth Road, Guildford and Godalming Crown Court car park, but the latter has now run out of supplies.

Chancellor and South West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt posted on X, external, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken to Thames Water CEO Alastair Cochran and the supplier was hoping to bring Shalford treatment works "back on line" within the next hour.

"They have significantly reduced water turbidity and are hopeful that the alarms will not trip once it has gone through," the chancellor added.

He said Thames Water would not know for sure until early evening but it was "looking more promising".

However, he added that even if the supplier was successful, disruption would continue overnight and into Monday.

Water is getting to vulnerable communities and local hospitals, Mr Hunt said.

Waverley Borough Council leader Paul Follows said he believed between 5,000 and 10,000 homes were affected, while Mr Hunt said earlier that 13,500 homes were off supply with a further 6,500 expected to be cut off shortly.

Thames Water has not confirmed either of these numbers.

More than 18,000 properties across Southampton and the New Forest also lost their supply on Thursday evening, many of which are still without water.

Thames Water retail director David Bird told BBC Radio Surrey that the supplier was working "24 hours a day" but could not "give a firm timeline for getting things resolved".

"Even once we fix the issues it may take a while to refill the reservoirs and make sure that we've got a robust water supply going forward," Mr Bird said.

As well as Godalming, residents in the nearby villages of Milford, Witley and Bramley reported outages.

Mr Hunt said the next question was the potential impact on schools on Monday, if the incident was not resolved.

"Also getting messages from pubs that have lost trade from closing on a busy day - big, big impact on many people," Mr Hunt added.

There are plans to restock the water station at Crown Court Car Park on Sunday evening and both stations will be open until 21:00 GMT.

Supermarkets said people were panic buying bottled water and Waitrose in Godalming said it had sold out.

As traffic in the town built up, Mr Follows urged people who did not need to go out and get bottled water to avoid doing so.

"Try and carpool so there is not excessive traffic," he said.

BBC reporter Julia Abbott said her husband queued for water for about an hour and was only given enough for one household, despite requesting water for elderly neighbours.

Ian Boardman, who was queuing for water, said he had not been given any information about when his supply would be back and would rather not be "saddled" with plastic bottles.

He said: "I don't really want a load of plastic going into my recycling bin."

Susan Carlin, also in the queue, said she noticed her water stopped about 16:45 on Saturday.

"I noticed I couldn't flush the loo then my daughter said there wasn't anything coming out of the kitchen taps," she said.

-bbc