Wow - I'm genuinely surprised that there is no legal responsibility to provide you with water! Maybe when this is over (or even now!) you should raise that with your MP.

There will be thousands of people in rural areas in our position Tim. And I can guarantee that a Tory MP with a large majority won't even look at the question, and even if he can be persuaded to raise it, there is nothing that can be done anyway. You will never get a Tory government to pass any legislation that costs their landowner members and donors lots of money! To remedy this situation across the rural areas of Britain would cost billions. It's not sexy like HS2 or Crossrail, and does not affect anyone visible, so will never happen, unless individuals pay for it. That is why many people have their own boreholes: but they have their own inherent problems. That said, we did know the situation.

Mr BW knows where the changeover point is between water company supply and private water supply (an uninhabited very old house on a hill with no normal vehicular access) and went round there several times yesterday, including at close to 10pm. The water board men have now found another leak on their part (up at the house), but ran out of light and hours to fix it last night (they are only allowed to work 15 hours a day).

It now seems that there are multiple leaks that everyone knew about but no-one bothered to do anything about, despite us notifying the estate farm manager every time we had a water problem.

The theory now is that we are the highest point and the end of the water line, and the other 9 properties below us (Estate farms, Estate workers' cottages or long-term rented with elderly inhabitants who are country people through and through and don't comment on things like orange water (just accepting as givens what god/the landowner throws at them)) have miles and miles of pipe to them (full of water which runs downhill) and internal cold water storage tanks (they are so old and rarely maintained so this is an historic situation that would not be allowed now), so they have not run out of water yet, but will do soon.

We will see what happens today... will the tarmac men finally turn up on the 3rd promised date, and will New Cleaner BW run away screaming when she turns up to find there is only water butt water to mop floors and clean bathrooms with today?

We have tarmac...hooray
We don't have water...booo

As we discovered around the middle of last year, having your own well doesn't mean you won't have problems; ours dried up last year, and, oh, the things we have learned.
I feel your pain, and I really, really hope you have an easier time getting it sorted out than we've had. Are having. *sigh*

But did Cleaner BW run screaming or did she woman-up?

I'm so sorry you're having all these problems and 100% identify with your desire to raise the drawbridge on society.

Thanks Thorne - and it's lovely to see you pop up occasionally after all these years.

Sue - she was truly brilliant. We'd put a bucket of water butt water and a jug in each bathroom, and some thermoses and boiled saucepans and kettles in the kitchen for hot water to do the floors, and she just got on industriously with the job.

Hooray for Cleaner BW! She sounds like a keeper - glad that something positive has come out of all this.