Leak at or near meter - advice

cubegame

Having a bit of a nightmare with our water supply. Over a year ago I noticed the meter still moving when I had all the water in the house off. The meter pit was full of water so I concluded that it was a leak at the meter. I phoned South East water and they fixed it.......or so I thought.

Come April this year I noticed that the meter pit was full again when I went to turn the water off. Again I noticed the meter moving and reported a leak. They came and fixed it again, this time digging much of the pavement away.

Now I've noticed again the meter pit is full and the meter is still moving with all the water off. I emptied the pit and noticed it was full some ten minutes later again. So there is still a leak.

However, this time South East water are saying it's a supply pipe leak. This is ridiculous because the leak is obviously occurring at the meter and if it is on the supply pipe side it's probably because they damaged it when they initiallr repaired the meter!

It's impossible to speak to an actual engineer and the customer service team is useless. The engineer who called three days ago was meant to call me but hasn't.

Any ideas? Should I put a complaint in writing to allow me to complain to Ofwat about this?

cubegame

As a secondary question am I right in thinking the water company is responsible for the portion of the supply pipe outside the boundaries of my property?

Gothicfairy

The water company is responsible for everything up to and including your meter but nothing after ( but that does not mean they will not repair things if required and will not deal with issues like cellar leaks etc)
So in theory if your meter is a boundary box on pavement they are only responsible up to that and the rest of the pipe is yours.

It might well not be the fault of customer service agent as they might be having just as much problems with the field workers as you are having, it is not unheard of for them to call the field staff and get no response or be told that they will call the customer and it not happen.

If it was me, I would first call back and ask for an appointed meeting with a field worker for a flow test / leak check. Say you are unable to do this as you can't turn off the main stop tap ( or are elderly, or pregnant..anything to suggest it would not be reasonable to ask you to do it ) Also say that you are concerned about high consumption and that as the meter leaked before you are worried it might happen again etc then you need to make it clear you understand that it can take 5 working days for the appointment but as part of the DG6 process they HAVE 5 working days to contact you so you will await that time scale and if nothing then write and use words like " complain" " NON DG compliant" "leak allowance against the bill"
From writing they then have 10 working days to reply as that becomes DG7

Hope the above helps but if you need more advice just yell.