I know that one of the biggest issues for everyone living in Hastings, Rye and the villages is the constant failure of Southern Water, from sewage to flooding to major water outages.
The water companies have been let off the hook for too long. Instead of forcing the industry to invest in fixing infrastructure, for years customers’ money was siphoned off into shareholder payouts and bonuses. In Rye and the villages, we suffered the consequences of this first-hand when residents were left without water for days in September 2023, and have suffered again every time Southern Water pumped sewage into our sea.
Holding Southern Water to account is my top priority. I sit on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, a cross-party group of MPs who scrutinise the water industry to find out how these issues can be addressed.
One of our first actions as a committee was to launch an inquiry into the water sector. We have been hauling in the water bosses one by one; demanding answers on their failures, examining the state of the water industry, hearing from campaigners and experts on what needs to change.
First up was the CEO of Southern Water. I pushed him on the impact of water outages, and crucially I made him listen to our experiences to demonstrate just how distressing these incidents have been for our communities. We had bottled water promised but not delivered to vulnerable people. We had too few water stations opened. We had traffic gridlock unleashed in our towns. All the while, businesses were forced to close, losing much money at key times. Schools had to close. Parents were unable to change their babies’ nappies. Old ladies were walking long distances trying to carry six two-litre bottles of water. Vulnerable people were simply not getting what they need, as well as the issues with basic sanitation and hygiene that you get when you cannot wash or wash up for several days.
The committee sessions have demonstrated the systematic failures of the water industry across the country. I grilled the CEO of South West Water about why she hid from the media during a major water crisis and failed to communicate with customers. I interrogated the CEO of Wessex Water on why the company had spent £250,000 on a TV advert that was finally banned for its misleading claims. Each session was a shocking inditement of the state of our water sector.
This inquiry has been a reminder of the urgent need for reform of our water industry. The new Water Bill has begun to clean up the industry: banning bosses’ bonuses when they fail to meet basic standards, installing monitors on every single pipe outlet and linking them to a system of automatic and severe fines, and the powers to in the worst cases send water bosses to prison.
We are also legislating to increase compensation received when the water companies get it wrong – something I’ve campaigned on since the water crises we experienced locally. Under the Labour government’s new regulations, the loopholes allowing water companies to avoid paying out compensation during these incidents will be closed, and customers will benefit from significantly higher payments to compensate them for water company service failures.
But this is just the start of the change. The Labour government’s independent commission into the water sector will report back in the summer to see what more can be done. I will be working hard to represent the experiences of Hastings, Rye and the villages in that process, and keep the pressure on Southern Water to deliver for customers and the environment – not CEOs and shareholders.
Image Credits: Helena Dollimore .
I was impressed at Helena’s grilling of the Thames Water CEO at the Committee (154% bonus option compared with 4 -6% lower down the food chain). In the end however these boards have learned to express contrition in public while maintaining abusive operations requiring more money.
Questions not posed:
What element of performance targets involve shareholder dividends (ie money taken away from infrastructure investment)?
Why do we make reference to inconvenience caused to water consumers and marine leisure and none to damage done to non-human users. The Water Companies owe a duty of care to multiple other species and not one of them can raise a fin or flipper to vote on dividends or remuneration.
Time the Labour government got bold and undertook fundamental change.
If only Ms Dollmore could understand that she needs to do more than grandstanding, she needs to understand what is being done to solve our area’s problems and work with the companies concerned, rather than against them.
So far this year the Fairlight Pathfinder Group, which now extends to Rye Harbour, has succeeded in getting Southern Water’s commitment to spending circa £3.5 million to line Fairlight’s wastewater pipes and now they are going to replace 5 kilometers of aging mains water pipes in the Fairlight Cove area. The pipes have been lined and the replacement of pipes starts in September. There is much more to come for the whole area.
Ms Dollimore has been invited to the Group’s meetings, that include senior executives of Southern Water, to learn what’s actually going on but has always found a reason not to.
She really needs to learn that to get action you have to actually engage with the companies concerned as we did with great success.
The country’s water network should never have been privatised. Privatisation in the late 1980s, coupled with ineffective regulation, led to the situation we are currently seeing — with water infrastructure urgently needing repair, environmentally disastrous sewage overflows into our rivers and the sea, new reservoirs failing to be built for 30 years and so forth. Private companies simply cannot be allowed to control essential public utilities, because such companies will always prioritise shareholder returns/dividends and executive salaries over the public good. Yes, as in Fairlight, the water companies are now being forced to repair and replace ageing infrastructure, but it doesn’t change the reality — which is that customers’ money will find its way to shareholders’ pockets rather than being fully reinvested in our water infrastructure. Private firms exist to make a profit, the bigger the better. According to Ofwat, since Sept 2021 Southern Water has been controlled by Australian infrastructure group Macquarie Asset Management. This is the same company that was a major shareholder in Thames Water and has largely been blamed for creating the billions of pounds of debt that TW is currently facing, and could well end in its liquidation. The government knows that private ownership of water has to be reversed, but it cannot afford to do so. It’s desperately hoping that much tougher regulation will solve the severe problems. I very much doubt this is the case. There’s no point ‘holding water companies to account’. You might as well tell a shark to stop eating fish and become a vegetarian. I urge our MP and the Labour government to nationalise the water industry and return the sector to public ownership, where it belongs. Grasp the nettle, Helena. I should point out that there’s nothing wrong with private firms operating in normal, competitive environments that don’t involve monopoly public utilities.