Residents in Sedgeford and surrounding villages were left with low water pressure or no water at all for four days over the May bank holiday weekend, after a leak on a communication pipe in Church Road coincided with demand running 30 to 40 percent above normal levels.

The disruption was raised at Norfolk County Council's Infrastructure and Development Select Committee on 10 September by Chair Cllr Karl Catchpole, acting on behalf of a local councillor not sitting on the committee.

Anglian Water apologised for the disruption but said monitoring had indicated supplies remained above the required service level throughout the outage. The company attributed the problem to the combination of the leak and the exceptional demand spike during the holiday period.

Committee members were not satisfied with that explanation. Given the long lead times involved in building new reservoirs, councillors pressed for the matter to be treated as both a resilience issue and a public health concern.

The committee called on Anglian Water, the Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport, and relevant partners to report back with interim measures to improve supply in the area before major infrastructure can be delivered.

Anglian Water said it would continue communicating with affected residents, work with the Norfolk Resilience Forum, and monitor performance to identify whether further investment was needed.

The episode adds to a broader picture of water supply pressure across Norfolk this summer. The county remains under a hosepipe ban that Anglian Water has warned will continue well into autumn, with reservoir levels still significantly below the required threshold.