Surrey school told to use bottled water by Thames Water in 'Do Not Drink' notice

Victoria Shipp
·3-min read
St Catherine's school
-Credit: (Image: Google Maps)


A girls school in Surrey has been told to use bottled water, after Thames Water issued a notice. A precautionary restrictive water use notice has been put in place at St Catherine’s girls school in Bramley.

Pippa Carte, Director of Marketing at St Catherine’s told Surrey Live “We’ve received formal notification from Thames Water that they’ve applied a precautionary restrictive water use notice on the school. Our top priority is the safety of the whole community, girls and staff, and we have immediate measures in place to manage the situation.

"We’ve got bottled water on site and new water sources for cooking and we’re in ongoing dialogue with Thames Water to resolve the situation as swiftly as possible.” Students have been able to continue to use the water to shower and wash hands

St Catherines is an independent girls school, catering for day pupils as well as borders. It currently has around 900 pupils, aged 3 - 18.

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This comes as Bramley deals with the years-long impact of a large fuel leak. It is unclear how much, if any, the issue this week is related to the historic fuel leak. However. currently a substantial amount of work is underway to clean up a suspected 2,000 litres of fuel that had previously been spilt at a nearby forecourt. Supermarket chain Asda had said it had been working on a solution since taking over the site in October 2023.

Councillor for Waverly Jane Austin said: "This last year our village has been put through a series of really terrible problems stemming from the substantial fuel leak. Residents have had to deal with fuel in our stream, smells, substantial environmental clean-up work and extensive road works.

"Extensive water sampling has been ongoing across the village by Thames Water for over 10 months now. It is important to restate this temporary stop notice at St Catherine's is precautionary while Thames Water undertake further analysis; tankers have already been sent to ensure continuity of water supply for the school. We've got many stakeholders working together here; no one will be taking any chances."

While the cause and the date of the spill are still unknown, the incident has had long running impacts. In February local landlords told SurreyLive that the fuel had left a vile stench in the village, and inside their pub.

A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Health and safety is our number one priority. We have been regularly collecting and assessing drinking water samples in Bramley village, following a fuel leak from the nearby petrol station.

“We’ve issued precautionary advice on drinking water at St Catherine’s and are supplying the school with bottled drinking water and tankers are on site to keep the kitchen running. We are working hard to identify a long-term solution.

“We will continue to assess the situation through our monitoring programme, and these results are being shared with public authorities, including UKHSA and Waverly Borough Council.

“We would like to reassure parents and pupils that this is a precautionary measure, and students can continue to use the water to shower and wash hands. We continue to rigorously test the water in the village.”

An Asda spokesperson said: "We are continuing to work with the school, Thames Water, and other parties to understand the results of some of the sampling undertaken. Since we took ownership of the site last year, we have worked to rectify the problems we inherited at the Bramley PFS site. We remain committed to doing so and to ensuring the local community is kept up to date. As part of those works, no fuel has been present on site since early March.”

SurreyLive has contacted Thames Water for additional information. We will update this story as soon as we have a response.

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