Thought I'd replied elsewhere on this. John is right - there are 3 old pipes of varying diameter that all hae leaks, hence the stop-start nature of the recent very long repairs.
Cllr Annette Finnie, a Marple Br resident and myself met recently with a manager on Brabyns from Cadent, whose teams did the lengthy repairs. He promised to look into
1) Better communication, which may include a dot matrix board to give warning of repairs
2) To chase up replacements for these old cast iron pipes. There is another team that do that and they have to prove cost-effectiveness. However it wouldn't have taken since Feb to replace!