While households across Bedford Borough face hosepipe bans, lower water pressure, and are urged to shorten their showers, a single water leak in a Kempston garden has been pumping out 540 litres an hour for four years.
That adds up to nearly five million litres of wasted drinking water every year. The homeowner now fears his house will disappear into the ground if nothing is done.
Four years of frustration
Ian Campbell lives on Cater Street in Kempston. The water pouring beneath his property has ruined his patio and is now eroding the ground under his house foundations.
Despite reporting the issue multiple times over four years, Anglian Water has repeatedly failed to act. Their own company policy states that leaks losing more than eight litres per hour must be addressed within 30 days.
When technicians finally arrived on 19 August, after the Bedford Independent made enquiries about the leak, they didn’t fix the pipe.
Instead, workers simply ‘marked up’ for an excavation team that could take another three weeks to arrive.
Mr Campbell is angry.
Speaking to the Bedford Independent, he didn’t hold back, expressing his frustration, “The processes at Anglian Water are flawed. Their policies are inefficient & ineffective. Their updates are vague and inconsistent.
“They behave with no sense of urgency. Left hand and right hand are not even connected to the same body, let alone talking to each other.
“They give zero F’s about the environment and are interested only in saving money to bolster profits for their shareholders by using whatever dodgy excuses and deflection tactics they can to fob us off, the customer.
“Anglian Water tells us not to use hoses, to take shorter showers, to not waste water, etc. But are seemingly fine for me to pump out two Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water
“The double standards and hypocrisy in place are staggering.
“Simply put, I feel that Anglian Water are a f***ing joke, and you can quote me directly on that,” he said.
Mr Campbell’s experience is far from isolated. Readers across Bedford have contacted the Bedford Independent to report unresolved, long-term leaks in their own neighbourhoods.
Problem areas reported to our newsdesk include Manton Lane, Mile Road, Castle Road, Church Lane, Albany Road, Shakespeare Road, Station Road in Millbrook, and Rothsay Gardens.
Some of these were reported months ago but still haven’t been investigated.
Read: Bedfordians urged to ditch hosepipes as regional ban starts
Anglian Water refuses interview
When we put these concerns directly to Anglian Water and requested an interview with a senior representative, the water company refused.
Over several weeks, the Bedford Independent repeatedly pressed Anglian Water to directly address the nightmare facing Mr Campbell and his neighbour, alongside the broader leaks blighting the Borough.
Each time, Anglian Water chose to ignore the specifics, completely brushing aside the distress caused to local residents in favour of corporate deflection.
At every turn, Anglian Water met questions with indifference, dodged specifics, and refused to face our readers.
Instead, over five weeks after our initial media enquiry, a spokesperson issued a short email statement.
“We don’t normally comment on individual customer issues, but we investigated your enquiry about the customer leak with our operations team.
“They informed us that this is not a leak on Anglian Water’s network – it’s a shared customer-side leak that we are supporting the customer with through a formal process,” they said.
Mr Campbell has received similar brush-offs. Since Anglian Water’s team visited his property in mid-August, he’s had no updates on what will happen next.
“Not a peep. No acknowledgement that they’d been, what they did, what next steps are, when to expect them back. Complete radio silence,” he told us.
Read: Bedford High Street springs a leak as hosepipe ban comes into effect
Under water industry rules, a shared customer-side leak occurs on a private supply pipe that serves more than one property before reaching individual water meters.
While utility companies usually expect property owners to maintain pipes on private land, water suppliers have specific legal powers to deal with repairs when clean water is being wasted.
In this case, Anglian Water’s own enforcement policy states that any leak losing more than eight litres per hour must be addressed within 30 days.
Rising bills and local anger
The lack of urgency comes as local residents pay more than ever for their water. Mr Campbell noted that his personal bill recently jumped by 34 per cent, with Anglian Water citing inflation and regional maintenance costs.
Anglian Water, however, says that from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, the average combined bill (for water and sewerage services) for its customers increased by 7%.
Public anger toward the water giant has already reached boiling point.
Last year (15 October), local environmental activists attempted a citizen’s arrest of Anglian Water’s chief executive Mark Thurston over continuous sewage spills and steep bill hikes.
The group of eight women, identifying themselves as the Citizen’s Arrest Network, surrounded Mr Thurston, who earns a reported £720,000 salary, while reading out a list of alleged “charges” relating to pollution and corporate accountability.
Read: Police called after activists attempt ‘citizen’s arrest’ of Anglian Water CEO
A national crisis
The situation in Kempston reflects a wider systemic crisis across the country.
According to campaign group We Own It, private water companies waste around three billion litres of treated drinking water through leaky pipes every single day.
Polling also shows 82 per cent of the British public now favour bringing water back into public ownership.
The debate reached the Commons this week as Prime Minister Andy Burnham told MPs that bringing essential utilities back under public control is necessary to lower household costs and restart economic growth.
As reported in the Guardian, Burnham has promised a ten-year project to bring essential utilities back under public control. It is expected to sit at the heart of his agenda over his next few months in power.
Allies say the prime minister is completely committed to taking water and energy companies back into public ownership, and he is looking at every possible option to get there.
The Guardian also reported in August that the prime minister is considering several options to deliver his promise to reshape how water and energy companies operate across the country.
One idea under consideration is tweaking the special administration regime. This would make it far easier to push struggling suppliers like Thames Water into insolvency, allowing the government to take direct control afterwards.
It could mark the start of Burnham’s planned ten-year project to bring utilities back into public hands. But any changes to insolvency laws are likely to face fierce legal pushback from creditors.
For Ian Campbell, systemic political reform cannot come soon enough. His priority remains far simpler: stopping five million litres of water from washing away his house’s foundations.
