A major water outage caused by a burst pipe in West Molesey, Surrey, has forced at least four schools to close and left approximately 6,000 homes without supply across South London and Surrey. The number of affected properties has fallen from 15,000 earlier on Monday, September 28, according to Thames Water, which warned that restoring full service will take “some time.”
Affected postcodes and areas
Thames Water confirmed that customers in 18 postcode areas are impacted: CR4, KT1, KT10, KT12, KT2, KT3, KT5, KT6, KT7, KT8, SM4, SW16, SW17, SW18, SW19, SW20, TW10 and TW16. The outage affects residents in the London boroughs of Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Sutton and Wandsworth, as well as the Surrey districts of Elmbridge and Spelthorne.
Some residents took to social media platform X to report waking up to no water on Monday morning. One user wrote: “We have no running water. I just want a shower and a cup of tea. Thames Water want their bonuses.”
School closures and official response
Among the schools closed are Esher Sixth Form College in Thames Ditton, The Holy Cross School in New Malden, Thames Ditton Infant School, and Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School in Surrey. Esher Sixth Form College announced on its website: “Due to a major water outage affecting the KT10 area and our campus, the College is now closed on Monday. Students and staff must return home, or stay at home until further communications via Teams.”
The Holy Cross School stated: “Due to a local water supply issue affecting the school site this morning, we have taken the decision to close the school today.” Thames Ditton Infant School and Long Ditton Infant and Nursery School also confirmed they were shut for the day because of the issue.
Paul Kohler, MP for Wimbledon, said he had contacted Thames Water following reports of outages in Wimbledon, New Malden, Raynes Park and Morden.
Repair progress and customer support
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Our engineers are making progress on repairing the burst in Molesey but it is likely to take some time to complete. We are rerouting water in the area to reduce the impact on customers while we work to fix the burst. Customers in Surbiton should be seeing their supply return although the pressure may be lower than usual. Water deliveries are being made to customers who are on our priority services register. We will be opening bottled water stations this afternoon and will provide their locations once confirmed. We believe up to 15,000 properties were affected this morning and that has now been reduced to 6,000. We again would like to say sorry to our customers and reassure those who are still affected that we are working to restore their water supply as quickly as possible.”
The company said bottled water stations will be set up later on Monday, with locations to be announced once confirmed. Thames Water continues to reroute supply to reduce the impact on affected customers while repair work on the burst pipe in Molesey progresses.
