Concerned about Coronavirus?

The safety and wellbeing of our staff and our customers is of utmost importance to us and we are continuing with emergency work only that can be carried out in a safe way, in line with the Government's latest advice.

The government has stressed the importance of high standards of cleanliness, including frequent, careful hand washing to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This might mean you’re using more water than usual over the coming weeks or months, but washing your hands only requires a relatively small amount of water, so you shouldn’t see a significant increase in your bills.

We’re really sorry if your supply’s been disrupted at such a difficult time. We’re working as quickly as we can to restore normal service for you. You can check our homepage for updates on all major incidents, including the availability of bottled water. The NHS advise that soap and water is the best way to keep your hands protected, but if you have some available, you can use alcoholic hand sanitiser as an alternative when hand washing isn’t possible.

The World Health Organisation has said coronavirus (COVID-19) can’t survive in disinfected drinking water and hasn’t been transmitted in this way.

We test our treated water regularly to check its quality, and all our staff follow governmental guidance, and our own high standards, for personal hygiene and health and safety.

We’re very sorry your supply’s been disrupted. We’re working as quickly as we can to restore normal service for you. You can check our homepage for updates to all major incidents.

We want to get water to as many customers as we can at this difficult time but we’ll need to prioritise those with water-dependent medical conditions. Please get in touch to let us know your situation.

If you need water urgently, it might be best to ask a family member, friend or neighbour to drop off some supplies for you.

We’re not seeing a surge in demand due to hand-washing and our systems are designed to cope with increases in water usage. However, demand has been higher than normal this year because of the warm weather and more people being at home.

We’ve created specific, comprehensive plans to make sure we can continue to deliver essential water services during challenging periods, including pandemics.

We also have several water treatment stations, where we store clean treated water, to provide resilience for our supplies and make sure we can maintain a continuous supply of safe drinking water.

We would like to reassure you the make-up of our water has not changed. The quality of our water is paramount to us and it’s a regulation that we continue to test and maintain it.

If you suspect contact with water is causing skin irritation it is advisable that you contact your GP. It is more likely that exposure to allergens from other sources would cause irritation to the skin such as soap or detergents. This could be especially likely at a time when we are all using more hygiene products.

However, a small number of people are sensitive to certain metals that can be picked up in water. For example, high nickel content can cause skin irritation. If you have had any recently installed plumbing this could cause the issue. It is however the homeowner's responsibility to have this investigated.

The levels of chlorine in our water supply have not changed and are not harmful to your health in any way.

However, you may be able to detect more chlorine in your water than usual due to a few factors:

• Chlorine prefers to be a gas rather than dissolved in water. Due to the increase in demand with more people at home, the water is taking less time to get to your taps from our treatment works so there has been less opportunity for the chlorine to 'escape' than normal

• Some of our customers may be receiving their water supply from a different treatment works than normal because Gatwick Airport isn’t using as much. Different treatment works use different levels of chlorine depending on the type of raw water they are treating, for example Bough Beech Reservoir in Kent is fed from a river so needs more than Elmer in Leatherhead which treats water from under the ground

• Chlorine is much better at escaping from warm water. Water will warm up while it sits in supply pipes, for example overnight. This means chlorine will be more noticeable when first used in the day as it’s escaping into the air rather than staying in the water.

To help reduce the taste or smell of chlorine you may want to try fully flushing your taps to bring cooler water in or keeping water from a mains fed kitchen tap in a fridge to cool down. Water should only be kept for a maximum of 24 hours and any jug should be emptied and re-filled after each 24 hour period. Any unused or flushed water need not be wasted and instead could be used for watering house plants or outside in the garden. There is more information on the water in your home web page.

Water UK has provided guidance to businesses that have been closed or running on reduced staff about their water supply.

Below is a summary of the Water UK advice for unoccupied buildings, where water has not been in use for many weeks which may now be subject to stagnation:

• Run all taps to flush water through 
• Remove aeration devices e.g. shower heads, before flushing
• Follow manufacturers' advice for all appliances – including internal filters or water softeners
• Make sure plumbers are approved under the WaterSafe scheme   

Visit the Water UK website for more details, however if you have any concerns please contact us directly on 01737 772000.