Latest Update (August 8th 2026) – We’ve had confirmation this week the Sibbertoft reservoir plant is now back online, which should alleviate the pressure on the network previously experienced. Also we will continue to meet with the Anglian senior team and our MP. We will update you further when more information becomes available. If there are any questions or points you would like raised on your behalf, please email clerk@eastfarndon-pc.gov.uk. Thanks all.
On Tuesday 30th June 2026, representatives from East Farndon, Clipston and Eydon Parish Councils, along with Stuart Andrew MP, met with senior representatives from Anglian Water to discuss the ongoing water supply issues. A detailed written update from this meeting, along with a full list attendees, is shown below, or click this link to view a pdf version. If you have any questions or comments, please use this link to email our Parish Clerk, Sarah Gresly.
Disruption to water supplies is likely to continue until the end of August 2026
Background
Water to East Farndon (and surrounding villages) is usually pumped and supplied from a reservoir/storage facility in Sibbertoft which itself is supplied from Rothwell. Water is usually pumped between Rothwell and Sibbertoft overnight or as and when needed to keep the Sibbertoft reservoir topped up.
As part of scheduled maintenance, Sibbertoft reservoir was taken out of service in February 2026, a usually low usage period on the water network, with remedial work intended to be completed by April. This facility in Sibbertoft is a sealed unit and cannot be accessed until drained so the scale of issues facing Anglian Engineers was not known until being opened and was far greater than anticipated.
With this reservoir offline, increased pressure has been placed on the Rothwell plant to supply water directly to the far corners of the water network including East Farndon, and the pumps in Rothwell are working harder than intended to meet demand. When demand increases considerably, particularly during warmer weather, the Rothwell plant cannot cope. To mitigate this, Anglian Water are using large water bowsers to inject water further along the network to meet the demand based on data received from various water sensors in the pipelines. However, this remedial action is often after customers have started to experience supply issues.
In addition to this, Kelmarsh Hall had purchased very large water storage containers which they had been slowly filling up in the lead up to the May Bank Holiday with equally large volumes of water. This put further pressure on the already struggling Rothwell plant as Anglian were not aware of this practice until after the event and are currently in talks with them to agree alternative supplies, including the use of water bowsers instead of taking directly from the water network for the upcoming Shambala event.
Unable to cope with the huge demands being placed on them, one of the pumps in Rothwell failed completely and had to be replaced. Spare parts were not available for an immediate fix over the May Bank holiday and so a catastrophic failure occurred which primarily affected the villages at the far end of the network including East Farndon.
Anglian Water accept they have fallen short of their obligations, have agreed the service customers have received is not good enough and have promised to make changes to their network in the future to ensure this does not happen again. Their immediate priority however is to complete the work at Sibbertoft and get that back online.
As a result of the continuing and anticipated future issues, Anglian has put East Farndon and nearby villages on “special watch”, which means that water pressures are being monitored more closely and a response team is on standby should any issues occur.
Alternative supplies
The issue of bottled water not being supplied during recent outages was raised and Anglian Water explained they normally use an external contractor to distribute bottled water, however, both this contractor and Anglian Water were short‑staffed during the May bank holiday outage. As a result, they were unable to provide bottled water as expected. They apologised for this and accepted that customers deserve better.
Concerns were also raised regarding the Priority Services Register (PSR). Anglian Water again apologised that residents on the register were missed and are investigating why this occurred to prevent a repeat of this failure.
Compensation
Several residents have received compensation for the supply failures over the May bank holiday. These payments have not been issued because the customer complained or is on their priority list, or because they reported a problem with their supply, but because sensors in the supply pipes said the water was off for those properties over a given 12 or 24 hour period.
When the fault initially got raised at the start of the BH weekend, it was reported at the same time by the sensors that low pressure was occurring in East Farndon. This led Anglian Water to believe that a main had burst in the Village and a job ticket was created. All subsequent calls from residents were logged under that job ticket and the clock started for an outage/no water supply.
Upon discovering the fault was, in fact, a failed pump in Rothwell, a new job ticket was created and the original burst main job closed down – this meant that the outage/no water clock for affected residents was reset or wiped. Subsequent calls by residents were logged under the ‘new’ pump failure job ticket which attracted a new start time.
However, because during that time the sensors reported some pressure/flow had returned, albeit intermittently, over the following few days, the timer recording how long people were without water entirely, reset and restarted several times.
This has been raised with Anglian by the Parish Council, along with Clipston PC and our MP as being grossly unfair to all the communities that had issues and continue to do so.
Anglian Water explained they are led by the data in terms of compensation payouts, but accept that resident’s actual experience is likely to be very different to the data the sensors report.
To that end, they have taken this issue away to speak internally and will report back in the coming weeks. There is no guarantee that further compensation will be paid out at this stage, but we will lobby them along with our MP to ensure this does happen.
Next steps
It has been agreed that all parties will meet again in around two weeks’ time, to receive further updates from Anglian Water including progress on the Sibbertoft site, timescales and compensation considerations. We will also press very hard along with support from our MP to ensure Shambala does not impact water supplies during the lead up to the August BH weekend.
Following that meeting, a summary update like this one will be published.
East Farndon Parish Council will continue to engage with Anglian Water and Stuart Andrew MP to ensure a satisfactory outcome.
Attendees:
Ian Rule – Director of Water Services, Anglian Water
Grant Tuffs – Senior Policy and Public Affairs Lead, Corporate Affairs, Anglian Water
Emily Linsdell – Policy and Public Affairs Lead, Corporate Affairs, Anglian Water
Bernie Fallon – Chair, East Farndon Parish Council
Sarah Gresly – Parish Clerk, East Farndon Parish Council
Ian May – Chair, Clipston Parish Council
Clare Valentine – Clerk, Clipston Parish Council
Keith Simmons – Chair, Eydon Parish Council
Claire Tester – Caseworker for Stuart Andrew MP
Stuart Andrew MP
