Huw Merriman, MP for the Bexhill and Battle constituency, was disappointed with South East Water's response to water mains bursts impacting the villages of Hurst Green, Robertsbridge, Mountfield and Etchingham in his constituency.

Whilst SE Water engineers have been on-site to fix the leaks, the company has made access to bottled water supplies difficult for those living in the rural villages as the only bottled water station was set up in Flimwell, some miles away from impacted residents.  SE Water say this was for logistical reasons as the water supplies come in on articulated lorries.  However, the MP argues that this is not good enough and arrangements should have been made to transport bottled water stations to every impacted village.

Huw said “I understand that infrastructure can erode but during Storm Eunice, at the beginning of the year, water supplies were cut off to hundreds of homes and access to bottled water was sporadic and a challenge for local residents especially those in rural areas. Utility companies, including SE Water came in for heavy criticism from me and MP colleagues for their response and support to residents.  These incidents should act as a lesson for better practice. It appears from this incident, that SE Water has not learnt any lessons from Storm Eunice if only one bottled water station has been set up in Flimwell village miles from many of those impacted.  

“It really is time for some answers from SE Water as to why they think their response to this water shortage is adequate. I am told that they can only get the supply lorry to Flimwell due to the road network. If that is the case, and I question this as other HGVs get to our villages to deliver agricultural and aggregate supply, they could employ smaller vehicles to move the water to each village. I also want to know if they have been speaking to the Sussex Resilience Forum who should be involved in supporting communities cut off from vital water supplies during the hottest time of the year. The Resilience Forum, which comprises all of our local authorities and emergency services has not communicated on the issue yet is best placed to identify vulnerable customers who need water delivered and may be unable to work out how to make themselves known.”

After visiting one of the impacted villages to speak to residents and speaking to the Chief Executive of South East Water for answers and a better service, the MP added:

“It is time for utility companies and members of the resilience forum to come up with a better plan to support rural communities when they impacted by serious issues. I have suggested to the CEO of SE Water that the parish council network should be engaged from the outset of any incidents. Parish councils know their communities best. They can help mobilise volunteers and support for the most vulnerable households at times of crisis but they can only do this if information is shared with them.”

Response from David Hinton CEO of South East Water:

Dear Mr Merriman,

Thank you for your time earlier this week and for the discussion we had regarding the incident which resulted in your constituents being without water for a considerable amount of time.

I’m pleased to say everyone in the Wadhurst, Robertsbridge, Flimwell and Etchingham areas have had their supplies restored. There were some localised areas in Mountfield which had airlocks in the pipes yesterday morning which resulted in some isolated customers still not having supply, however our teams have been out removing those from the system.

Following our discussion yesterday I wanted to summarise the conversation including the actions we will take.

• Increasing our use of Parish Councils through their Clerks to help distribute bottled water more locally in affected areas including advising on suitable locations.
• We will contact these Parish Councils once the network settles to set up a process for making this happen
• Continue our post Storm Eunice work with Sussex Local Resilience Forum to understand how we can make more use of data sharing during incidents enabling us to improve our response to vulnerable customers in the area. Sussex LRF are actively working with all parties to provide processes, systems and  agreements to allow all parties to easily and consistently share all vulnerable customer data for events such as these.  I think this a really good initiative and will make a real difference.  

We will soon be writing out to all customers affected by these bursts to explain what happened and ask them to provide their feedback on how they felt we dealt with the situation.

The findings from these comments will then be fed into our incident review, so we can then put any lessons learned into action.

Kind regards

David Hinton

CEO