'It has been a nightmare' - Residents angry as village without water for 30 hours

A VILLAGE outside Salisbury has been without water for almost 30 hours.

Shipton Bellinger has been without water since Monday morning because of an outage. It is not yet known what the cause of the outage is.

Harriet Bilton, 36, lives in Shipton Bellinger, with her boyfriend and is seven months pregnant.

She told the Journal: "It's an absolute joke. We bought our house in October and there has been all sorts of issues with sewage leaks and water outages, but this is extreme."

The water in Shipton Bellinger is supplied by Cholderton Water, and Miss Bilton said the communication from the company has been "awful".

She said: "We have had no contact from them at all. I tried calling the number yesterday and obviously it was Bank Holiday Monday but no one answered. I left a message and no one responded, I have called six times and had nothing back."

The only way residents have been able to find out what is going on is by going onto the Cholderton Water website or by choosing to receive emergency emails.

"I am seven months pregnant and I can't have a shower. There are other people in the village who are vulnerable or need to be cared for and they have no water and no communication from the water company," she said.

"It's a joke."

Cholderton Water has also been unable to confirm when the water will be restored, initially telling customers it would be yesterday evening, then this morning, and then this lunchtime. It is still not back on.

Dani Allsopp also lives in the area and told the Journal it has been a "nightmare".

She added: "There has been very little communication from the suppliers at Cholderton Estate and they have not been supplying customers with any bottled water or a bowser in the short term.

"This is leading to many angry residents as we continue to wait for some form of communication/ water supply.

"As a mother of a poorly new-born and a 21 month old this has been a nightmare requiring us to go in search of and pay for bottled water."

The Journal was unable to contact Cholderton Water, but a statement on their website posted at 2.45pm reads: "The specialist contractors have now bypassed the leak section in the river with 40 metres of mains pipe and are now working on connecting this to the main pipe and are now working on connecting this to the main reservoir so pumping can recommence."

It has also now delivered bottled water to three locations in Shipton Bellinger (The Boot Inn – Car Park, The Community Centre – Car Park, and The Working Men’s Club- Car Park), and one in Cholderton (The Crown Inn – Cark Park).

Several businesses in Shipton and Cholderton have had to close today because of the problem.

Cholderton Water sent out an email at around 8pm on Tuesday night to say that despite its best efforts to restore supply to the reservoir, "it has just failed upon testing a few minutes ago".

The email added: "While our team work on a separate solution, we have placed an order for 8 tankers of water to replenish the reservoir tomorrow morning. Although this will only provide a small amount of water, it will help some of our customers.

"In addition, we have placed an order for a further eight pallets of bottled water to be delivered to the same four sites as today.

"I appreciate our apologies won’t help the situation but I can assure you that the team here are working hard to restore supply.

"We will keep you all as updated as we can throughout tomorrow."