Tens of thousands of Southern Water customers remain without water into a second day, with many criticising the utility firm's response to the water outage.

Vulnerable customers feel they have been abandoned and others have criticised chaos around bottled water stations, many of which opened later than planned. It's the second year in a row customers have been left without water in the run up to Christmas.

The Daily Echo has put a series of questions to Southern Water bosses.

(Image: Newsquest) READ MORE: Full list of schools closed today as water outage hits thousands

Here are the answers in full:

What exactly is the “technical issue” which caused this outage? 

"We have found the root cause of the technical issue, which is how we put water into supply and are working around the clock to fix the issue at Testwood Water Supply Works."

When did the issue begin? 

"Customers were first affected on Wednesday morning 18.12.24 at 08:00hrs."

This is the second year in a row a major supply outage has occurred just before Christmas as a result of a failure at Testwood. What steps are Southern Water taking to ensure that this does not happen again? 

"We have plans in place for the company to deliver major improvements in water resilience, wastewater treatment, and customer service, as well as enhancement and protection of our environment. At Testwood alone we are investing more than £50m to improve the site to ensure customers have a more reliable source of water."

As of 6.15pm yesterday , you officially only have one bottled water station open to serve the c. 70,000 homes affected by this outage. This has caused traffic chaos in the area around Places Leisure. Why have more stations not been set up? 

"It is 58,000 that are actually impacted as we re-routed water supply to 14k+ properties normally supplied from Testwood, before they were affected. See below information about Bottled Water Stations."

You stated on your website in your 6pm update yesterday that residents should not go to “other potential bottled water station locations until we confirm they are open”. Why have these stations been giving out water to residents if they are not open? These station locations were publicised on social media by the leader of Hampshire County Council, presumably he obtained them from you. Why would these be published if they were not open? 

"We’ve only publicised Bottled Water Stations once we had confirmation that they were open. This wasn’t an official update on our communication channels. 

"However, in addition to our bottled water station at Places Leisure in Eastleigh, we opened two further stations in Marchwood and Southampton."

(Image: Newsquest) Several residents have contacted us angry at Southern Water’s response, and you will have seen social media is awash with criticism. Complaints include communication (not knowing what is going on because updates have been so few and undetailed) and that vulnerable people on the priority services register were left waiting all day for water deliveries. One mum, who has a five-week old baby on medicated formula, needs water to be able to feed her baby and was not helped by the emergency phone line. What are your responses to those comments? 

"Our Incident Alternative Response team have been working continuously to ensure we support our most vulnerable customers and key services, and mitigate for any potential loss of supplies.   

"We’re continuing to deliver bottled water to customers on our Priority Services Register. If you would like to be added to our register, please call 0330 303 0368.

"Bottled water deliveries to customers on our Priority Services Register are ongoing, as well as care homes.  

"We have updated the website, Twitter and Facebook approximately every 2-3 hours, and will continue to do so. We have proactively contacted many institutions like schools, and have sent SMS messages and emails to all customers in the affected area for whom we have accurate contact details. In parallel, we have endeavoured to update as many media titles as possible, providing a spokesperson to provide updates to TV and Radio outlets."

Tim Mcmahon, Managing Director of Water at Southern Water said: "Our teams are working 24/7 to ensure we support our most vulnerable customers and key services. We’re continuing to deliver bottled water to vulnerable customers on our Priority Services Register. If you would like to be added to our register, please call 0330 303 0368. We’re sorry for the impact this is causing."