Last week, Greg met with David Black Chief Executive of Ofwat, the national water regulator, to discuss the performance of South East Water and the resilience of its infrastructure.
In the meeting they discussed that for thousands of residents in Tunbridge Wells to have suffered two periods of cuts to their water supplies – in December last year and in June of this year – is unacceptable for a business whose sole purpose is to supply water to customers.
Greg reminded the regulator that these outages have been compounded by the imposition of a hosepipe ban, despite following a particularly wet winter and spring.
The Ofwat Chief Executive agreed with Greg that it is wrong to attribute blame to customers working from home, when many other water companies in the country had better anticipated a rise in demand and acted accordingly.
Greg was glad to be told that Ofwat has summoned the Board of South East Water for a meeting later this month to address the deficiencies in their system, to raise concerns over poor communications with customers and to greater establish how the company will improve resilience in the future.
Greg and David will be holding a further meeting following Ofwat’s meeting with South East Water’s Board to discuss what progress was made.
Following the meeting, Greg reinforced the points he made in a letter to the chief executive (reproduced below):
Dear Mr Black
Thank you for our meeting on Thursday about the performance of South East Water and the resilience of its infrastructure.
As we discussed, for thousands of my constituents to have suffered two periods of cuts to our water supplies of drinking water – in December last year and in June of this year – is unacceptable in a business whose sole purpose is to supply water to customers.
These outages have been compounded by the imposition of a hosepipe ban, despite having experienced a particularly wet winter and spring. Indeed, even after the recent few weeks of warm weather, Bewl reservoir is still at over 90% of capacity.
It is wrong to attribute blame to customers for working from home. There are many places in the UK in which more people are working from home since the pandemic, yet South-East Water is the only company to have cited this as a reason to restrict access to water.
As I said in my debate in the House of Commons in January, the most essential problem is that South East Water have not invested adequately in the resilience of their infrastructure and that needs to be rectified without delay.
I was encouraged that you will summon the Board of South East Water to address these deficiencies and that you will have that meeting before the end of the month.
As I set out in our discussion, I would be grateful if you would do the following in that meeting:
- Use your powers to accelerate the investment in upgrading the network that is required by South-East Water
- Investigate whether the investment and the projects are adequate to address the demonstrated fragility of South-East Water’s network in and around Tunbridge Wells, and if not, direct that they should be upgraded
- Impose substantial fines on South East Water and use your powers to set them, exceptionally, significantly above the normal tariff for outages given the persistent problems caused to customers and the failure to provide a reliable service
- Make it clear that no bonuses should be paid to those Executives who are responsible for the failure of adequate service to my constituents over the last year
- Ensure that no dividends are paid out of the regulated business to the holding company until the required investment has been made
- See that compensation is paid to those customers affected
- Direct a more timely and effective response readiness for any future problems
If South East Water fails to make the necessary improvements they should have their licence revoked.
I am grateful to you for agreeing to have a further meeting with me following your meeting with South East Water’s Board to discuss progress.