Scottish Water Appeal To Check Empty Premises

29th December 2010

Scottish Water is appealing to businesses and homeowners to check properties left empty during the festive holiday for burst or leaking pipes.

Scottish Water is continuing to tackle burst pipes and leaks across the country to help ensure normal water supplies are maintained. But we are asking customers to help by re-checking their private properties and land for bursts or leaks and having them repaired by a plumber as quickly as possible.

While leaks and bursts of this nature can affect the water resources in an area, it can also cause extensive damage to the property which can take months to fix and lead to a loss of use of the premises.

This appeal comes as Scottish Water is continuing to deploy all its resources in its call centre and in the field to deal with the effects of the extreme weather on the water infrastructure.

The water utility is keeping customers informed through their website and has deployed extra call centre staff to answer customer calls.

Since Christmas Eve our call centre took 26,000 calls to 12 noon on December 29 - four times the normal level. This included 7,000 in a 24 hour period.

About 75% of the calls are customers seeking advice on internal burst or frozen pipes in their homes or business.

Scottish Water is helping out by pointing customers towards www.scottishwater.co.uk/warmpipes where customers can watch videos that detail how to protect internal pipes and also how to locate their nearest plumber for internal repairs. Customers can also help by reporting visible bursts in the public network directly to our Customer Helpline on 0845 601 8855 or visit our website to report a leak.