Water bug victims find no cash payout on tap: The Isle of Wight, where compensation has been denied to residents who had to boil water for up to 10 days because of a contaminated supply

CONSUMERS will find themselves at the mercy of their water suppliers if they suffer the ill effects of contaminated water.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate said this week that 98.7 per cent of 3.57 million water samples tested last year were acceptable. But pass rates varied, with Thames Water scoring the highest proportion of failures.

Some residents of the Isle of Wight have discovered that compensation for water contamination is not guaranteed.

In April around 18,000 people living on the north-west side of the island had to boil their water for five days because the bug cryptosporidium had contaminated the water.

Thirty households were asked to continue boiling for 10 days.

Because of this outbreak customers had to boil water continually or buy the bottled variety.

After the incident many people complained to the county council, which asked Southern Water to make a gesture of goodwill. However, it declined, saying it had been diligent in alerting people and keeping them informed.

Ray Collett, divisional director of the Isle of Wight region of Southern Water, says: 'Most people boil water anyway for cups of tea and coffee.

'All they needed to do was to put the boiled water which was left over into the refrigerator for later use.'

However, Ofwat, the Office of Water Services, feels that water companies should have to make some payment to the customers.

Yorkshire Water, which had a similar outbreak at Christmas, voluntarily agreed to pay pounds 10 to each of 30,000 people who had boil notices for 10 days.

At the moment it is up to the goodwill of each individual company, but Ofwat would like to see something firmer laid down.

Southern Water feels that it did all it should. Mr Collett adds: 'Three years ago no-one was even testing for cryptosporidium.

'We are now carrying out routine analysis, although we do not have to.

'Back in April we detected it and immediately gave warnings. We feel we have done our job and that preventative medicine is better than compensation afterwards.

'We had letters from many people who were very impressed with the way we had handled the situation.

'Of course, if there were regulations saying we should make a cash payment to customers who were affected we would be happy to abide by them.'

A guaranteed standards scheme was agreed with the water companies when the industry was privatised in 1989.

But in May this year Ofwat put forward suggestions for a revised scheme and a new code of practice about compensating customers.

When comments on these have been taken into account the Director-General will recommend new regulations to the Secretary of State for the Environment.

At the moment the existing scheme provides for a flat rate payment of pounds 5 in respect of each failure to meet guaranteed standards.

Payments have to be claimed in writing by the customer within three months of the incident. There is nothing about compensation in case of contamination.

Ofwat is suggesting that payments under the scheme should be automatic and that the sum should be increased for certain failures in standards, including the new standard of pounds 10 for any boil notices over five days.