Response from United Utilities

After speaking with residents yesterday, we raised the concerns that people had raised with us (see yesterday's blog post). We've had a response from United Utilities today, and I am summarising the main points below.

 

Several telephone numbers were issued in Huyton for different support services (for example, for loss adjustors, clean-up teams), and with hindsight, this may have caused some confusion. In response, we have now set-up a dedicated lo-call (7p per minute) number for people who were affected by the incident.

This telephone number is 0845 026 5148.

This will be manned 8am-8pm Monday to Friday, and 8am-4pm Saturday. Outside of these hours, the calls will go to our main customer centre.

People affected by the flood should have received letters from GAB Robins, our loss adjusters, stating individual telephone numbers for them to call regarding their claims.

We would strongly recommend that customers call these individual GAB Robins numbers if they are inquiring about claims, rather than use the 0845 number above. This will help their query to be dealt with quicker.

We will also be attending the community meeting next Thursday, where we will address any further issues from residents.

The flooding was obviously an awful experience for many people in Huyton and United Utilities has rightly worked hard to help the customers affected.

As you may know, we had a team on site for a week and a half after the flood and all the people we know were affected had visits from our loss adjusters and customer staff. We also held claims clinics at the Gate, where we spoke to 50 people.

We moved swiftly to help people in Huyton by making quick payments of goodwill, separate from any legal compensation, which included £200 for internal flooding and £100 for external flooding.

People who suffered internal flooding have also received cheques for £500 for the inconvenience and a cheque for £200 to pay for electricity. A total of 27 customers have received a further £100 for electricity and we will review these payments again next week, when we hope to remove most of the dehumidifiers. Also, a further review of inconvenience payments will be made next week.

I’m sorry if people have experienced difficulties contacting us, but hopefully this new telephone number will resolve the issue. Also, we will be happy to help people with any further queries at next Thursday’s meeting. 

So we would strongly recommend that if you are a resident reading this and the information provided is not consistent with your experience to use the number above. The good news is that there will be a further review of the inconvenience payments. The more people attending the Thursday meeting, the better.