Southern Water: Apologies, Promises and Rebukes
Four senior officers of Southern Water, including Chief Executive Lawrence Gosden, came to Hastings on Tuesday 23 July to address all 32 members of the full borough council; they also answer questions from both councillors and members of the public. In the meeting Mr Gosden acknowledged that Hastings has endured “unacceptable performance” on the part of the company over the past three years, for which he apologised . He then presented a business plan which proposed £7.8bn investment across the company’s network over the next five years (reduced after Ofwat scrutiny to £6.9m). He claimed this would ensure a reliable supply of water, avoid any repeat of recent flooding, and reducing overall pollution by 50%.
Locally, a survey of the Alexandra Park stream would be delivered by the end of August and a full detailed investment plan for Hastings by October.
Hasting’s mayor Judy Rogers, who chaired the meeting, said that more than 150 questions had been filed by local residents in advance of the meeting. There followed a near two-hour session in which a selection of these were put to the Southern Water team, with particular focus on compensation claims relating both to the town centre floods of October 2023 and January this year and to the water outage over the May bank holiday weekend.
Responses on behalf of the company referred to compensation paid to hospitality venues, to discounts applied to residential water bills and to the figure of £120,000 pledged for festivals and community events impacted by the May outage. Further individual cases, including those of residents and businesses who were now finding their buildings uninsurable, would be “looked into”. But no general offer of redress was made.
Council leader Julia Hilton thanked the Southern Water team for presenting themselves, but issued a statement in the aftermath saying: “We as a council are united. We shall continue to hold Southern Water to account. [What they have promised] is a start – but much more is needed. We must have reassurance that they understand their own system, that they know where potential issues are and that they have a detailed plan to shore up our town against future flooding, outages and devastating sewage pollution.”
Former council leader Paul Barnett was less emollient. He also thanked Mr Gosden for coming but dismissed the presentation as a “PR exercise… which doesn’t allay any of the fears that either councillors or residents of Hastings have about your ability as a company to actually put Hastings back where it needs to be. You’ve let this town down for years”.
The Labour party’s new leader Margi O’Callaghan said of Mr Gosden’s apology that she “didn’t feel like it was that heartfelt, given the fact that your five-year business plan is going to put the bills of our residents up by 73 per cent. I recently read that you got a bonus of £183,000. That is not acceptable. Why should they suffer? Why should they pay? How can you justify that?”
Incidents affecting Hastings over the past three years
- Five wastewater bursts in Bulverhythe between 2021 and 2023
- Beach closure following a power outage in Bexhill in summer 2022
- Town centre flooding January 2023
- Town centre flooding October 2023
- Water outage May 2024
- High number of storm overflow (CSO) releases
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