Sewage Continues To Flood Pub

A POPULAR Kilwinning pub was forced to close its doors at the busiest time of the year because it keeps being flooded with raw sewage.

Margaret Bradford, owner of the Tower Inn, says her problems started just after the Main Street revamp was completed in November last year.

“Since then I’ve had nothing but problems,” she added.

“I’ve had Scottish Water out four times because raw sewage keeps coming out of the gents’ toilet but they can’t seem to get to the root of the problem.

“It came to a head a couple of days before Christmas when I had to empty six buckets of urine and excrement out, then on Monday, December 27 both the gents’ and ladies’ toilets overflowed and the mess spilled out into the pool table area of the bar.

“I simply had to shut the pub up, there was no way I could keep open under these conditions – you never know what will happen next.”

Margaret finally managed to open the doors on Thursday night but claimed shops and pubs in the town were struggling to get back on their feet after the disruption caused by the revamp. Some months I barely make enough to cover my rates bill and now I’m not even drawing a penny at what should be my busiest time of the year,” she said.

To add to her woes electrical problems have caused the lights in the pub and nearby shops to keep flickering on and off and, when the Irvine Herald called last Thursday, there was anther huge hole in the road outside the Tower as workmen tried to trace what is thought to be a broken cable.

“It’s one thing after another,” she sighed. “When will it all end?”

A spokesman for Business Stream, the division of Scottish Water which deals with commercial properties, said they could not get involved because the problem lay outside the premises and they only dealt with internal issues.

However, he said he had spoken to Scottish Water who were going to treat it as a priority case and use the latest hi-tech equipment in a bid to solve the problem once and for all.

“Scottish Water are aware of the problem and have visited the pub on a number of occasions,” he added.

“They will ensure that this is dealt with as a priority matter and engineers will return to the Tower again and this time they’ll use thermal imaging technology to ascertain the cause of the flooding.”

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