Northumbrian Water has removed the boil notice put in place for customers in Darlington last week after a valve failure at its Broken Scar Water Treatment Works led to the release of untreated water into the potable water supply.

The boil notice was put in place as a precautionary measure in some areas of the town on Tuesday 1^st February. The water company said the problem at the treatment works was identified and corrected quickly - a fault with a valve had allowed a small amount of water into the networks that had not been fully disinfected.

and technicians were able to identify exactly where in the networks the water had been distributed. A full cleansing and flushing programme of the treatment works and networks has been carried out.

Following the fault at the Broken Scar Treatment Works, teams from the water company, in conjunction with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA - formerly Public Health England), have been carrying out a series of water quality tests at various locations on the water networks across the Darlington area.

A technical fault at Broken Scar Treatment Works, in the early hours of last Tuesday morning caused some of the water to leave the site without the correct level of disinfection and enter the water network.

Northumbrian Water said the tests have now been completed and following analysis the results showed that the tap water meets the high-quality standards expected and is safe for customers to drink again.

Every sample carried out across Darlington since the fault at the Treatment Works on Tuesday had passed water quality and safety tests.

Northumbrian Water’s Water Director Keith Haslett said:

“We’re pleased to report that all of the results from our thorough testing regime over the last few days have come back showing that the water meets the high-quality standards we require and both ourselves and the UK Health Security Agency are happy that the boil notice for the Darlington area can be removed.

“Everyone who has been affected can now return to using and drinking their tap water as usual.

“Thankfully incidents of this nature are incredibly rare for us and our customers, but I’d like to reassure everyone that we’ll be doing everything we can, learning from this incident, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Penny Spring, Director of Public Health for Darlington, said:

“Results have showed that every water sample in the Darlington area since Tuesday (February 1) has passed strict safety tests, and that the water is now safe to drink. This is great news and I fully support this decision by Northumbrian Water to remove the precautionary notice to boil water, in line with expert advice from a range of partners.”

On Tuesday night last week hundreds of Northumbrian Water employees were on the ground delivering boil water notices to more than 15,000 properties and delivering bottled water to almost 300 Priority Services vulnerable customers.

Early on Wednesday morning, teams were deployed to school gates across the Darlington area with around 20,000 bottles of water for 60 schools and 25 nurseries within the impacted area.

15,500 text messages were also sent directly to update customers on the situation and regular updates were posted on the Northumbrian Water social media channels.