Welsh Water says it is investigating why the predominantly elderly population of a Pembrokeshire village was not offered bottled water when left without drinking water for five days in the middle of a heatwave.

Residents of the village of Moylegrove were left with no water, or a very sporadic supply, for five days during the heatwave earlier this month.

Local resident David Daw, a retired senior executive at Severn Trent, said that villagers were having to drive into Newport and Cardigan to buy bottled water after their supply dried up during one of the hottest weeks of the year.

“It was a was a bit of an emergency really, given heat, and the fact that Moylegrove is largely an older retirement village, very small and isolated,” he said.

Mr Daw said that residents received a series of texts from the company telling them that they may have no water or low pressure and saying that it would return later in the day. However, there was no meaningful communication.

This continued for five days with no further communication from Welsh Water other than ‘bland text updates’ and no offer to distribute bottles of drinking water.

On day five, Mr Daw finally got through to a call centre in Cardiff.

“I demanded they deliver bottles of drinking water to people at least and miraculously they did,” he said.

He added that the bottled water was not delivered until 11pm on the fifth day and only because he had made a fuss.

“They absolutely should have dropped off bottled water to everyone for drinking, not just me because I shouted loudest. I said all villagers should have a supply,” he said.

Mr Daw said that when he worked in the water industry the policy was to communicate clearly with customers and distribute bottled water if it was a prolonged issue.

Mr Daw shared his bottled water with neighbours and asked the Welsh Water employees to leave them on the doorstep of others in the village.

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“It was a disgrace really,” he said. “There was no communication from the provider regarding distribution of free bottles to homes, or any form of compensation.

“The problem was, there was no communication, no reassurance, just bland text updates.”

Welsh Water said that the lack of water was due to a burst main that took longer to repair than anticipated.

“We apologise to customers for the inconvenience this caused,” said a spokesperson.

“The burst took longer than we had hoped to repair, this was due to difficulties accessing the area around the burst safely. Once our team was able to access the area safely, they quickly completed the repair.

“We are sorry to hear people did not receive bottled water and will investigate what happened.”