YORKSHIRE Water has dismissed calls for it to pay £25 in compensation to thousands of residents across York who lost their water supplies or suffered low water pressure at the weekend.

A power outage at a pumping station caused major disruption to supplies on Friday evening in neighbourhoods including Fishergate, Haxby, Wigginton, Copmanthorpe, Acomb, Strensall, Clifton Moor and Holgate.

Some residents complained that their loss of water was causing major problems, with one parent saying their disabled children required constant access to water and another householder saying it was causing 'sewage issues.'

The loss of water also led to toilet problems and the early closure of pubs and clubs in the city centre, including the House of Trembling Madness in Lendal, Club Salvation in Tanner Row, and Ziggys night club in Micklegate.

The House of Trembling Madness urged customers on twitter not to 'keep pooing on top of poo, as we’ll have a poo blockage.'

A House spokesperson said on Saturday that it had had to close about 45 minutes early but the night was pretty quiet anyway, and supplies were back to normal by the morning.

Northern Powergrid also said it suffered a major power cut in the Hull Road area on Friday evening. 

Now Luke Charters, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for York Outer, has written to Yorkshire Water to request it to make voluntary compensation payments to everyone affected by a loss of water or pressure.

He said compensation was not obliged under Ofwat's “guaranteed standards scheme," which said a payment or credit of £25 must be paid only if pressure fell for an hour or more on at least TWO occasions in a 28 day period.

"But they've made enough profit and it's causing disruption to York families, so they should just get on and automatically compensate everyone," he told The Press.

In a letter to Yorkshire Water, he said: "I call on Yorkshire Water to automatically and voluntarily apply a £25 credit to all affected York households following on from the incident on 24 February."

But Yorkshire Water said that whilst it worked hard to resolve issues as quickly as possible, it had set service commitments that were outlined in its Customer Charter and 'unfortunately on this occasion, this incident doesn’t meet the criteria.'

A spokesperson said the company would like to thank its customers in York for bearing with it on Friday night, as some of them might have experienced low pressure or no water due to a widespread power outage in the area.

"This affected one of our pumping stations," they said. 

"As soon as the power outage happened, our teams were onsite with standby generators to get the pumping station back up and running, with the majority of customers having their supplies back to normal within a few hours."