Five postcodes affected by burst water main in Mitcham

A burst water main in Mitcham this morning disrupted water supplies to households across five postcodes in Croydon and Streatham.

Croydon Council described the burst main as “a major incident”.

The water main burst was on Commonside East, near Mitcham Common.

Much of the supply problem was due to a fault at a Thames Water booster station, which left some without any water, or low water pressure.

“We’re sorry if you have no water in the CR0, CR2, CR4, CR7 and SW16 areas,” Thames Water tweeted this morning.

“This is due to a fault at our local booster station. We’re working to restart the pumps as quickly as possible, which will begin returning the water supply to the area.”

Four hours later, the privatised utility was saying that, “Our teams are on-site working hard to fix the burst.”

“We’ve managed to stop the water escaping and we’re currently removing any excess water from the area before starting our repair. We’re adding water back into our pipes using tankers, so as many customers as possible can turn on their taps again.

“Tankers are large vehicles filled with water, which you may see parked in your area,” they explained, somewhat patronisingly.

“You should start seeing water return to your taps, although you may still have lower than usual water pressure.

“We know how disruptive it is if you lose your water supply, so we’ll work hard to get things back to normal as soon as we can.

“As soon as we know more, we’ll be back with an update, and this will be no later than 5pm. Thank you for your continued patience.”

Meanwhile, with thousands of his Streatham and Croydon North constituents without a supply of water or with low water pressure, Steve Reed OBE, the anti-nationalisation environment secretary, chose this afternoon to boast on Twitter “Labour halts Tory water rationing crisis”.

For Thames Water updates, click here

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Click here for more details

Inside Croydon – If you want real journalism, delivering real news, from a publication that is actually based in the borough, please consider paying for it. Sign up today: click here for more details

Inside Croydon has moved to Bluesky. Click here to join us there for latest updates and insights

PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates

Check out our archive of podcasts on Spotify, including our monthly news discussion panel show thingy, the Croydon Insider, and The Andrew Fisher Interview

If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com

As featured on Google News Showcase

We offer FREE ads to community groups when they have members who are paid subscribers to Inside Croydon

Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here