The day the taps ran dry
When 76-year-old Anna Petrova turned on her tap one April morning, nothing came out. For twelve days, her block in Sidcup, south-east London, had no running water. Bottled water arrived in crates, but it was never enough to cook, clean, or flush. “You don’t think about it until it’s gone,” she told The Guardian. “We were living like it was another century.”
Sidcup is not some forgotten outpost. It sits on the edge of London’s expanding commuter belt, a district where new flats rise above rows of older social housing and the property market hums with redevelopment. Yet in the same postcode where prices have risen by more than 40 per cent in a decade, residents like Anna found themselves queueing for water deliveries while cranes swung overhead.
Her experience captures a growing paradox: in cities awash with private capital, the basic systems that keep people connected to water are crumbling.
Gentrification’s hidden fault lines
London’s outer boroughs have absorbed wave after wave of regeneration over the past twenty years. Sidcup, Walthamstow, Croydon, and parts of Brent have seen rapid population growth and sharp rises in rent. But while new developments boast “sustainable living” credentials, the infrastructure beneath them is often decades out of date.
Water networks in these areas were built for smaller populations and lighter demand. The main that serves Anna Petrova’s block, for example, was laid in the 1950s. Thames Water confirmed the leak that caused the outage was on an old section of pipe still awaiting replacement. According to Ofwat, London loses around 600 million litres of treated water every day through leaks — enough to supply nearly four million people.
The imbalance mirrors London’s broader housing story. Regeneration draws investment to new districts, yet the funding for maintenance of older estates and public networks has not kept pace. As one engineer working on south-London maintenance put it: “Money follows the shiny stuff. The rest gets patched when it fails.”
When prosperity leaves people behind
The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) estimates that 1.5 million households in England and Wales now spend over five per cent of their income on water and sewerage. Many of these households live in the country’s most economically productive cities.
Rising rents and service charges, combined with metering, have pushed urban tenants into what campaigners call “hidden water poverty”. In areas such as Bristol’s Harbourside and Manchester’s Ancoats — both celebrated symbols of urban revival — local housing advocates report tenants facing high bills and intermittent supply.
“Water is supposed to be universal,” said a spokesperson for Shelter North West. “But the reality is that your postcode and your landlord can decide whether you get a fair deal or a reliable connection.”
In Sidcup, Anna Petrova’s building is managed by L&Q Housing Trust, one of the country’s largest associations. Residents said they waited almost two weeks for the company to admit responsibility for the leak. L&Q has since apologised, calling the case “unacceptable” and pledging to review maintenance procedures.
Infrastructure versus image
Beneath the marketing of “green” or “smart” urban living lies a brittle network. The London Assembly’s Environment Committee warned in 2024 that water resilience was being “undermined by piecemeal regeneration and inconsistent maintenance of legacy assets.”
Thames Water’s capital spending plans reveal how uneven that investment has become. Per-household expenditure on network renewal is highest in areas tied to high-profile development projects such as Nine Elms or Stratford. In contrast, outer-suburban and mixed-tenure districts like Sidcup, Woolwich, and Harrow record some of the lowest levels of pipe replacement.
It is a pattern repeated nationwide. In Manchester, burst mains in redeveloped central zones have left older adjacent blocks without supply for days at a time. In Bristol, leaks and pressure drops on the edge of the city’s new waterfront developments have become common enough for residents to form local “water watch” groups.
The geography of neglect follows the money. Where investors see opportunity, pipes get replaced. Where profit margins are thin, the ground beneath people’s feet is left to decay.
The politics of neglect
Government strategies promise resilience and fairness, but few address the structural causes of urban water inequality. Ofwat’s PR24 framework includes social tariff reforms, yet campaigners argue that it still treats affordability as a matter of income, not infrastructure.
“Water poverty isn’t only about what’s on your bill,” said CCW chief executive Emma Clancy in a 2025 briefing. “It’s about the security of supply and the reliability of the systems that deliver it. For too many urban households, those systems are failing.”
Meanwhile, responsibility is blurred. Councils are often powerless to compel private developers or water companies to reinforce networks before new housing goes up. The result is a patchwork of oversight: strong on building control, weak on essential services.
Living through the divide
In Ealing last summer, a burst main during a heatwave left thousands of residents in some of West London’s most expensive postcodes without water for a weekend. Photos of people filling buckets from emergency tankers circulated widely on social media. For many, it was a reminder that even prosperity offers no guarantee of security when infrastructure is stretched past its limit.
“I never thought I’d see people in W5 queueing for water,” said one resident interviewed by The Evening Standard. “We talk about sustainability, but we can’t keep a pipe from bursting.”
Such moments expose the illusion of resilience. The problem is not isolated failures but a system designed around short investment cycles, not long-term public good.
Towards a fairer flow
Campaigns like Right2Water UK are calling for a statutory definition of water poverty that accounts for both affordability and reliability. Some councils, including Bristol and Glasgow, are exploring urban water resilience strategies combining leak detection, pressure management, and targeted repair funds for older estates.
But the wider fix will require a shift in values: seeing water not as a commercial service to be optimised, but as a public right to be guaranteed.
For Anna Petrova, the crisis ended when engineers finally replaced a length of pipe beneath her street. “They said it won’t happen again,” she said. “I hope they’re right.” Yet as Britain’s richest cities continue to grow, her story stands as a warning: the taps can still run dry — even in places that never thought they would.
