By January 2023, telephone engineers were calling the fire service due to the smell of fumes coming out from a manhole next to a church that neighbours the petrol station.
It was only persistent complaints from locals – and interventions from Jeremy Hunt, who appealed to Waverley borough council, Surrey County Council and the EA’s chairman – that led to proper tests finally being ordered.
Yet incredibly, a pressure test of the pipes in February 2023 detected no problem – throwing investigators off the scent.
Later investigations carried out by environmental consultants hired by Asda, which was preparing to take over the petrol station from Co-op, soon confirmed evidence of the fuel leak by drilling boreholes under the forecourt.
They dug up the site and quickly found the culprit. A broken pipe that had been patched, wrongly, with a fibreglass panel, which had itself later failed. Exactly when or why the botched repair was made remains the subject of an ongoing investigation.
In addition to the natural environment, the fuel had contaminated Openreach’s telephone network ducts as well, making it dangerous for engineers to enter. The petrol also penetrated plastic pipes used by Thames Water, prompting the utility giant to issue gradually escalating warnings to St Catherine’s school and hundreds of surrounding households.
Further problems have quickly snowballed. For example, Openreach cannot carry out repairs on its network, leaving residents in the lurch if their broadband fails. (Some have turned to Elon Musk’s Starlink service instead.)
Meanwhile, Thames Water is replacing the plastic pipes with metal ones that should make it safe to drink tap water again by early July. But the company says progress partly depends on the clean-up currently being undertaken by Asda’s consultants, while its temporary roadworks have crippled businesses on Bramley’s High Street.
Ozzie Kabadayi, owner of Kingfish, a fish-and-chip shop, says customers don’t want to brave long traffic jams to come and collect food. He has been forced to turn to family members for loans to keep his business afloat.
“We’ve still got gas, electric, everything to pay,” he says. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”