A water company in Reading is being pushed to give out more compensation to people who lost water for hours during major outages.
People in the area suffered two major water outages last year.
The first incident in January affected neighbours in East Reading, who were left for days without water due to a supply interruption at the Pangbourne Water Treatment Works.
The second, last November, affected neighbours in Caversham and was caused due to burst water mains in Sonning Common.
Following the outages, Thames Water, which is responsible for the network, paid out a minimum of £30 to 6,778 affected households and commercial properties.
Those who experienced longer losses were paid £30 for each additional 12-hour period without water.
Now, Matt Rodda, the Labour MP for Reading Central, is pushing for Thames Water to increase the compensation by at least £20.
Mr Rodda said: “The reason I’m aiming for £50 is that is what the new guidelines from Ofwat say the compensation should be, whereas Thames Water has paid £30, which is the old guideline.
“This is such a major interruption, although it happened under the old guidelines, the water company should have done a lot better, so I’m asking them to increase the payment. I’m delivering a hard copy letter to residents in Newtown and Caversham Heights on this matter.”
He also expressed frustration over the distribution of water during the outage last November, when bottles were handed out at the Tesco Superstore in Henley.
Mr Rodda argued water could have been distributed at the Albert Road Park or elsewhere in Caversham.
He explained: “When water was cut off in Caversham Heights, they wanted people to go to Henley to get their water.
“That adds insult to injury I’m afraid. It’s a lot of driving around just to get water.
“There are a number of places they could’ve used.”
In response, Thames Water has apologised but has apparently rebuffed the request for greater compensation on top of that already paid.
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “We apologise to our customers in East Reading and Caversham Heights who were affected by water outages last year.
“We understand how disruptive it is to be without water, and we’re sorry that, in these instances, we did not meet the high standards of service we aim to provide.
“Payments were made to customers under our Customer Guarantee Scheme (CGS) and reflected the regulatory obligations in force at the time of these water outages in 2024.
“We recognise the frustration and inconvenience caused by these incidents and are continuing to invest in improving both our infrastructure and the service we provide to our customers.”
New CGS payment processes were introduced on July 2.
Thames Water has also reviewed its approach to bottled water station locations, and are also trialling pedestrian sites in conjunction with a drive-through bottled water station.
