BUSINESSES suffered severe trade losses after a burst water pipe closed a road in Basildon.

A large burst in the mains pipe on Courtauld Road shortly after 4am this morning resulted in 100 meters of the roadway flooded.

The floods reached a depth of 30 centimetres, and resulted in water supplies being lost to 60 properties in the surrounding areas, including many traders on the Burnt Mills Industrial Estate.

It also flooded the Basildon Garden Café business, situated a few meters from where the burst happened. It has been forced to close for the entire day.

Discount Electrical Distributors in Burnt Mills Industrial Estate typically have 60 customers visiting by 10am on weekday mornings, but this morning they’d only had six walk through the door.

Simon Armstrong, manager of the business, said: “I commute from Kent, so I’m always here super early at about 5am, but by the time it hit 7am I was still the only staff member there, everyone else was stuck because the whole road was underwater.

“It really has affected us, we normally see through around 250 customers on a weekday but had less than ten all morning, we’re also one of the biggest performing branches, so we took a hit.

“It’s a bit of a nightmare.

“Luckily we’re still out doing deliveries, but no customer could get through to collect, customers were ringing saying they couldn’t get through.

“We should be ok, it did give us time to sort out our warehouse, so there’s a bright side.

Wayne Ford, who works at Bemco Electrical Wholesalers on the industrial estate, said: “We’ve had absolutely no footfall today at all, it has really affected us. It varies, but a typical weekday morning we do have several walking in.

“We also do deliveries, which we’re still managing to do, but we had staff walking down the road to deliver things as the cars couldn’t get through.

“Hopefully it won’t affect us in the long term, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

A spokesman for Essex Fire Service said: “Firefighters were called to reports of a burst water main in Courtauld Road, Basildon at 4.20am on Wednesday.

“On arrival crews advised that around 100 metres of roadway was flooded by water that was around 30 centimetres deep. Crews used a low pressure pump to remove much of the water, before leaving the scene in the hands of the Highways agency at 9.09am.”

An Essex & Suffolk Water spokesman: “We carried out an emergency repair to a large burst on Courtauld Road in Basildon Wednesday morning. We understand water supplies to around 60 properties were affected, and we are carried out rezoning in the area to restore supplies to domestic properties as quickly as possible.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank customers affected for their patience at this time."

The Garden Cafe owners declined to comment.