THOUSANDS of gallons of raw sewage poured into a village shopping centre in the middle of the night.
A desperate shopkeeper at Lymm, Warrington, tried to contact United Utilities at midnight to inform them of the situation – but got no response from the 24-hour emergency help line.
It was 3.30am before bakery owner Phil Sexton managed to speak to anyone and 11am before workmen arrived at the scene.
By then Mr Sexton and his wife, Sarah had spent two and-a-half hours clearing three inches of raw sewage from the street outside their shop in Eagle Brow.
Mr Sexton, chairman of Lymm Traders, said: “I received a message at midnight telling me raw sewage was cascading down Eagle Brow passed my building and pooling in the street. I immediately attempted to contact United Utilities 24-hour emergency number but couldn’t get a response.
“I eventually managed to speak to somebody about 3.30am. They apologised and promised to commence immediate action, but said a clean up team could not attend until first light. In fact, they arrived at 11am – three hours after first light.”
Mr Sexton said he rang United Utilities six or seven times and was “fobbed off” with apologies.
“At 6.30am I made the decision to clear the pavement access above the sunken gardens as it was covered in around three inches of raw sewage and this would either prevent customers reaching us or, if they did, they would have trampled raw sewage into my shop.
“Myself and my wife spent two and-a-half hours making the pavement passable and managed to remove 99 per cent of the sewage from the pavements. But literally a ton of sewage remained in the roads.”
Mr Sexton said when workmen finally arrived to proceeded to wash the raw sewage in a stream which eventually runs into the River Bollin.
“I believe this to be totally unacceptable from a health, hygiene and business point of view”
United Utilities spokesman Christian Ewen said: “Firstly we would like to apologise sincerely to Sexton’s Bakery for any inconvenience caused.
“Our engineers were called to the Brookfield Road area after a report that a sewer had backed up. Work was carried out to remove the blockage, which caused the back-up. Unfortunately the problem re-occurred and our engineers returned to site in the morning.
“We always endeavour to arrive on-site as fast as we can but our weekend team was very busy with a number of call-outs which were placed in order of priority.
“The blockage was removed and a full investigation will now be made on the sewer.
“This will involve carrying out a CCTV camera survey and once we have the results, we can make any necessary repairs.”
