Beauty salon’s water supply cut off during roadworks

A BEAUTY salon had its water temporarily switched off without warning during roadworks.

Define Hair and Beauty in Church Street, Caversham, was one of a number of business affected during the incident on Wednesday last week.

Thames Water was carrying out work near the junction with Prospect Street.

Salon manager Annabelle Banks said a client was due to have her hair colour washed off at about noon but when she went to turn the tap on no water came out.

She said: “I panicked because I thought something was wrong with our boiler system.”

Then she realised it might have had something to do with the roadworks outside the salon so she spoke to the workers.

She said one of the men told her that they had turned off the water so she complained that the salon should have been given warning.

Ms Banks said: “He told me to give him 10 minutes to turn it back on so I said, ‘No, I need it now because a client needs her hair washed’, so he put it back on.

They had thought it was only going to shut off the water in the hardware shop next door, they didn’t realise it would affect us.

“They were nice after that and we shut at 2pm on a Wednesday so we didn’t really have any problems after that. The client was very nice about it.”

Temporary traffic lights were in place for the duration of the roadworks from Tuesday to Friday, which caused traffic delays of up to 10 minutes.

Queues built up on Church Street, St Peter’s Hill and on both sides of Caversham Bridge. Ms Banks said: “Clients still came in but some had to call to say they would be late because they were stuck in traffic.

“We were understanding about that and everyone still had their appointments so it didn’t really affect the business.”

Neil Asbury, who runs Caversham Homecrafts next door to the salon, said he was not seriously affected.

He said: “I just made myself fewer cups of tea and the toilet was out of use for a bit but there wasn’t a problem.

“Caversham has quite a reputation for being strangled by traffic jams. We’ve had roadworks for several years now, so you just get used to it.”

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