Virgin Damaged My Water Supply Digging Pavement Up

Won't see your pic until approved but ...

I have just had to replace the water supply pipe to my home. You should be eligible for consideration of a leak allowance if fixed within a certain time (in my area the criteria was 30 days from leak being discovered to getting it fixed).

Did VM dig up any of your property as part of their work? Do you know where exactly the leak is?

AIUI, the pipe is the water company's responsibility up to your property boundary line and your responsibility after that (although gets more complicated if a shared supply pipe is involved).

Edit: Image now showing. Have you looked under the covers for the water meter and the VM cover in the pavement? Can you see water in those?

There would be something of a mismatch in the depth of services for VM to have directly damaged the water pipe (if each was buried in the correct way). The water pipe should be at a depth of 750mm (older installations may be more like 600mm) and VM should be at 250mm to 350mm. Not impossible for VM to have shaken something loose though, I suppose, during digging or reinstatement.

Hi paulh789 thanks for your post here in the Community, although we're sorry to hear of your concerns raised here.

We would like to look into this further for you, but as mentioned here it is unlikely that we would have dug far enough depth-wise to be able to interfere with any water pipes as part of the works.

If you can reply with if there is water within the VM cover in the payment we can take this further for you.

Many thanks

@goslow has given you some excellent advice in his posts above.

In particular, don't rely on VM doing anything about this withing the necessary timescale. They work through subcontractors to do the outside work and there is always a significant delay in getting anything done.

But the apparent size of the leak just doesn't seem reasonable.  For water to come out at that rate it would have to released at considerable pressure. It would have lifted paving slabs.  Are you sure there has been no obvious signs of a leak in the immediate area?  You've probably had rain during the last few days, but something should have shown before then.