Winchelsea Beach village flooding top of the agenda

The Hastings and Rye MP hosted a summit with Southern Water bosses to press for progress on works to remedy the problem of flooding in the village.

She has held several meetings with the company in recent years about the ongoing issue.

Ms Rudd, who is also Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “Despite having hosted several public meetings and multi-agency meetings over the past five years to overcome the need for tankers, and despite £250,000 investment by Southern Water to this end, it is nonetheless most frustrating for the residents of Winchelsea Beach to have to keep enduring this 
regular disruption to their quality of life.

“I am determined to regularly press all concerned for clear and demonstrable progress in reducing the incidence of tankering, and to strengthen enforcement where necessary.”

At the meeting, Ms Rudd pressed Southern Water to put in place longer term plans for Winchelsea Beach to avoid the continuing and regular need to tanker surface water.

Cigolene Nguyen, Southern Water’s head of wastewater planning and resilience, said: “Our chief executive, experts from Southern Water and myself attended a highly productive meeting with Amber Rudd, the leader of East Sussex County Council and others.

“We’re delighted she recognises Southern Water’s hard work and £250,000 investment we’ve put in to resolving flooding issues at Winchelsea Beach.

“We explained that during heavy rain, we must use tankers to stop our sewers being overwhelmed, causing flooding to residents.

“We recognise this has caused inconvenience to residents and are working closely with the council to minimise this.

“We believe this issue is connected with surface water ponding on private land and our investigations have pointed to some issues at specific caravan parks in the area.

“We hope with help from Amber we can fully investigate the issues, ensure that actions to resolve the issue are shared fairly, and end the disruption from our tankers.”