A RESIDENT says she is astonished a water company will not fix a leak outside her home, despite advice to conserve water during the current heatwave.

Debbie Basham, of Plas Bennion Road, on the border of Ruabon and Penycae, first noticed a leak outside her property last week, believed to be from the network of Severn Trent Water's local service provider Hafren Dyfrdwy.

The company sent out an engineer to look at the problem and was told someone would be sent out to fix it as soon as possible.

But 10 days after she first noticed the leak, which is now causing water to seep into her home, Ms Basham has been told no-one would be out to fix the problem until next week, July 31, because another utility company has been working in the same road.

She said: "This was first reported over a week ago. An engineer came out last Friday (July 20) and said they would raise a job ticket and they marked the pavement. I have been chasing customer services as it is getting worse.

"The agents are very poorly trained and have given me misinformation every day since Monday assuring me an engineer would be coming out the same day. I have stayed at home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"I spoke to a manager last night who promised me a call back. This morning (Wedenesday) I spoke to another manager who actually transferred me to an agent without even telling me. They again promised to sort it. Eventually I spoke to planning who apologised for the mix-up and said they couldn’t now send one out until July 31, and if it was leaking on our property they wouldn’t fix it anyway."

She added: "Every day it gets worse and it's now coming up the inside of one of my walls.

"And every day I called they told me an engineer would be out that day. It was only after three escalations that they told me 'no', that’s not the case, no one will be out until July 31. I thought we were trying to conserve water during this summer heatwave.

"The worst thing of all, they told me not to touch it. I have insurance which I could have called 10 days ago.

"If we are trying to conserve water it''s ridiculous as it's been gushing out for 10 days and I could have got my insurance involved.

"Instead, they'll probably send me the bill for this water."

A spokesman for Hafren Dyfrdwy said: “Our teams have been out and investigated reports of a leak on Plas Bennion Road, and further work is required to confirm that the leak is coming from the Hafren Dyfrdwy network.

“We’ve planned this work in at the earliest opportunity for the end of the month, as we require traffic management to keep our engineers safe, and also to allow another utility company currently working in the road to complete their work before we can begin.”