South East Water: Disruption of Supply Debate
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Alison Bennett
Main Page: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)Department Debates - View all Alison Bennett's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
South East Water: Disruption of Supply
Alison Bennett Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Emma Hardy
As I have highlighted, the White Paper talks about companies that wish to move to alternative ownership models, but I will briefly touch on special administration for breaching statutory duties. Under section 37 of the Water Industry Act 1991, a water company has a duty to supply water within its area of appointment. A serious breach of these principal duties or of an enforcement order can be grounds for a performance special administration regime, if that breach is so serious that it is no longer appropriate for the company to continue to hold its instrument of appointment.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
I absolutely despair of South East Water. As we have heard from Members who represent Kent constituencies, South East Water cannot cope with large water outages; but nor can it cope with small water outages. In my constituency, the village of Staplefield has just gone through 30 hours without water, without bottled water being supplied and without good information—indeed, there was even some misinformation. I understand that trying to fix decades of neglect of water infrastructure will take a long time, but in the Minister’s next meetings with executives at South East Water, will she ask to look at their communication plans so that people can know what is happening, get timely information and get the bottled water they need, since outages seem to be par for the course these days?
Emma Hardy
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. One of the issues that we discussed in the conversation on Sunday was communication, including about where to put bottled water stations. I was told that during this incident, South East Water had worked more closely with the local resilience forum to listen to its advice about where to place those stations. If that is not her experience, I would be keen to hear about that, so that I can take that back to the company. South East Water has an interim chair, who I know is keen to build new relationships with Members of Parliament—she has assured me that she will be meeting MPs. I urge Members collectively to raise this issue of communication and where bottled water stations are directly with the interim chair, so that we can have them in the right place. Fundamentally, Members of Parliament and councillors probably know and understand their areas far better than a water company does.