Water executives face Wealden councillors questions

On March 30, senior executives for South East Water (SEW) were at Wealden District Council’s overview and scrutiny committee to answer questions about water outages in Kent and Sussex in January.

SEW chief executive David Hinton told councillors the outages had been the result of a freeze-thaw event, followed by the impacts of Storm Goretti.

He said the freeze-thaw event had led to pipes bursting. The storm saw issues arise at one of the company’s major treatment works at Barcombe Mills, resulting in a reduced supply of clean water.

Mr Hinton said: “So that meant we weren’t in balance between supply and demand and some areas of your region were affected — 25,000 properties; 4,000 in Wealden district between the 10th and 14th of January.”

The supply issues, Mr Hinton told councillors, were partially the result of power outages during Storm Goretti. This saw the Barcombe water treatment works go offline for a short period, he said.

The storm also had an impact on the River Ouse, which is the source of water for the Barcombe treatment works. Mr Hinton said heavy rain — by washing in soil, sediment and other matter — had changed the quality of the river water making it “almost untreatable”.

Councillors asked if the company’s management and investment in infrastructure had also played a role. Others pointed to its track record of previous outages, noting how SEW faces a £22m Ofwat fine for supply disruptions between 2020 and 2023.

Mr Hinton said the company was planning significant investment in major infrastructure.

Councillors heard how the company was in the process of developing a drought prevention scheme, which could see water piped from Weir Wood Reservoir to Ardingly Reservoir.

The company had initially intended to build an overground pipeline, but now expects to begin construction on an underground pipeline in 2028, the committee heard.

Some committee members asked if this investment would be sufficient in the face of climate change and extreme weather events.

Labour councillor Ben Cox said: “There is a lot of evidence that is becoming more contained at one period. We have less rainy days, but when we have our rainy days they are bigger.

“For you to say that Barcombe doesn’t work when it has a really heavy day. Well this is the reality we are going into now. It doesn’t seem like we are getting the kind of answers from you that would give me confidence that, going down the road, we are going to be in a better situation than we are today.”

Mr Hinton replied: “Climate change has accelerated beyond what anyone anticipated it would. Despite the fact that we’re supposed to get less freeze-thaws, we’re getting more freeze-thaws.”

Mr Hinton added: “We had a 25-year investment plan in 2019/20 and we’ve created a new one for 2024/25.

“What the climate change impact has done and the demand change has done is effectively meant we need to accelerate that plan.

“So as an example … [works to build a second reservoir next to the existing Arlington reservoir] was quite a long way out in the distance with the … 2019/20 forecast. What climate change has said is ‘you need to do that quicker now’.”

Committee chairman Andrew Wilson (Ind) asked Mr Hinton if he was “confident” the company would be able to meet the level of housing growth in Wealden.

Cllr Wilson asked Mr Hinton to provide a yes or no answer, but Mr Hinton argued it was too complicated to do so.

Mr Hinton said: “We have only recently seen how distributed the housing figure increase is across our patch.

“We have written to you on your consultation and our position in that is we’ve planned to meet the forecast we had in 2019 and we need to talk to planners, government, local authorities [and] regulators about how we need to potentially adapt that plan to meet the extra houses going forward.

“That is very much part of the dialogue, because effectively the plan has changed and we need to look at the plan. So I can’t commit yes or no, because we’ve got to work through that position.”