Leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd and Clwyd West MS Darren Millar has slammed Welsh Water’s response to last week’s burst water main in Conwy and Denbighshire and criticised the company’s Chief Executive for not visiting the communities affected.
Responding to the Statement by the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs: Water interruption in Conwy, Darren called the emergency response to the crisis “insufficient” and condemned Welsh Water’s Chief Executive for not getting out “to actually visit the community at all throughout the whole duration of this exercise”.
Describing the “chaos” that ensued the burst, Darren said:
“We take clean water supplies for granted and it’s only when we lose them that we value what we’ve lost.
“It was chaos in Conwy with a lack of clear communication by Welsh Water to both customers and elected representatives. The continency planning was poor, with insufficient access to bottled water for vulnerable residents and care homes, and it was a disgrace that the very highly paid Chief Executive didn’t come in person to see the situation on the ground.
“We had housebound residents that were not able to get water for three days. I had one constituent, she phoned three times since losing supply on Wednesday, and it wasn’t until Saturday morning, at 2 o’clock in the morning, that she had a knock on the door with bottles arriving. Now, clearly, that’s not good enough.”
He added:
“There were care homes that didn’t get supply quickly enough of even bottled water, let alone being put back on the mains. And it was 100,000 people - It may have been 40,000 customers - but it was 100,000 people, ultimately, that were affected by these problems.”
Darren thanked the emergency responders and the teams that worked hard to fix things, but added “that the whole way that the emergency response kicked in was insufficient,”
He also raised concern that Park Home Sites and schools were not considered a priority and called on the Cabinet Secretary to address this for the future.
