Lewes councillors pass 'no confidence' vote on performance of South East Water

On Monday (July 24), Lewes District Council unanimously backed a motion to declare a vote of no confidence in South East Water following recent water outages and hosepipe bans.

The motion, brought forward by Liberal Democrat councillors Sean MacLeod and Christina Bristow, also called on the council to declare a ‘water emergency’ and to appoint a councillor champion to monitor the performance of both Southern and South East Water.

Cllr Bristow said: “Isn’t it ironic how we do everything we can at home to use less water — save a bit here, save a bit there, [using] the end of a glass of water to water a plant kind of thing — yet often in our streets we can see water shooting down, which is left unchecked for quite a long time.

“I think us getting more involved can only be a good thing, both in the context of climate change and population potential growth, industry and housing change and future resilience, which is what it is all about.”

Council leader Zoe Nicholson (Green) said: “I do think that it is worth reminding ourselves that in the 30 years since our water companies have been privatised, since they were taken out of national hands, £65bn has spent and given out as dividends. That is an extraordinary figure and that is why we are where we are.

“Whilst I really accept colleagues saying this is in part about climate change, our systems need to be resilient for that and they are not, they are simply not.”

She added: “Our residents, frankly, expect water to come out of their taps. They don’t expect roads to be full up of water, like we’ve seen in Newhaven, for years on end and they don’t expect for low levels of water to be a regular occurrence in parts of our community.”

The council also requested its Policy and Performance Advisory Committee to request the attendance of South East Water CEO, or another senior member of the company, to come before it and explain how the company is going to become climate resilient.

A spokesman for South East Water said: “Having watched the council meeting webcast, we understand and appreciate the frustration being expressed by councillors. We know that residents in Newhaven and Peacehaven experienced disruption to their water supply in June, which was caused by a burst on a vital water main serving the area. We worked hard to fix this burst as quickly as possible, whilst doing everything we could to minimise the impact to customers.

“Bottled water was quickly made available to residents whilst the mains water supply was unavailable, and we updated councillors in the affected wards.”

The spokesman added: “As several councillors highlighted during the meeting, climate change is having a real and profound impact across all of Europe.

“After the heatwave last summer, the freeze/thaw last winter and this year seeing the hottest June since 1976, our network has seen unprecedented tests of resilience and capacity that have breached our most cautious planning models from our last business plan, which was agreed with economic regulator (Ofwat) in 2019.

“However, we recognise this and are addressing this in our latest business plan.”