SEVERN TRENT CHAOS

Heather Kidd, Shropshire Councillor for Chirbury and Worthen, has hit out at the behaviour of Severn Trent Water and their repair teams caused major disruption in her ward recently.

Heather said “Severn Trent fail to deal with leaks until they get pretty serious. They ignore problems until things get worse and then suddenly close a road claiming its an ’emergency’.

This is what happened between Snailbeach and Stiperstones the other
week. A leak was reported to them on 5 July (and repeatedly thereafter) but nothing happened until this week when they closed the road to all traffic quoting emergency powers. This caused chaos with the school bus and parents taking their children to school being refused access as was the service bus.

There was no warning whatsoever and the information given out by the workmen was poor and frequently inaccurate.

They intended a 3 day closure which was totally unacceptable – this is the only road running through both villages. A lot of pressure from the Council and myself reduced this to a day and the road is now open. Council pressured them to reduce to 1 day.

Unfortunately this is only the latest in a string of events like this. Some months ago they closed the road up to Rorrington Hill and went home for the weekend leaving many residents trapped. More recently they closed the Snailbeach Road at Plox Green without warning and causing residents a great deal of aggravation – a situation made worse by abuse from some of their workmen.

I know this occurs across the County. My colleague Cllr Roger Evans experienced a similar close in Annscroft recently.