Gas supplies back for homes in Walton-le-Dale

Around 140 homes in the area had their gas cut off since early on Sunday, September 2.

It came after water leaked into pipes, believed to be from a burst main nearby.

He said: "We’re satisfied all is OK and so we’ve started to put everyone’s gas back on.

"An incredible amount of water got into our network and we had to get every drop out before we could safely restore gas supplies.

"Unusually for an incident like this, such was the volume of water involved, we’ve had to pump water from every house’s service pipe - the narrow pipe which takes gas from the bigger main in the road to each individual house.

"The teams on site have been incredibly grateful to the residents of these four streets. Not nice for them at all to be without gas for hot water, heating, cooking – and it’s great to be able to get them back on gas. They’ve been so understanding and appreciative of their work."

Householders in Renshaw Drive, Holland Avenue, Pear Tree Crescent and Pear Tree Close were affected.

To turn the gas supply in the homes back on engineers worked well into last night visiting each of the 136 homes, turning the gas on and carrying out a range of safety checks.

However Cadent has said that in the event of an engineer not being able to access a house they would leave a card with has a number to ring to arrange an appointment from with an engineer at a convenient time.

The company spokesman said: "It’s really important people don’t take the risk of turning their own supply back on. Our engineers need to do it, as they carry out gas safety checks only a qualified engineer can do.

"We’d always ask people to check the ID of our engineers before letting them into your home. We’d expect you to do it for peace of mind, so please do."