Hastings council's Labour leader 'fed up' with performance of Southern Water

Speaking at a full council meeting on Wednesday (July 19), Cllr Paul Barnett (Lab) said he was ‘fed up’ with Southern Water and called on the company to ‘reset’ its approach to working with the town.

Cllr Barnett’s concerns included Southern Water’s role in the aftermath of flooding of Hastings town centre in January, criticising the company for delays in providing information which could prevent a future deluge.

Cllr Barnett said: “I am fed up with Southern Water. I know we have been saying it for ages, but if you remember after the floods of January 16th, we did get everybody together and agreed to commission an independent report into why the flooding happened and how we make the town centre more resilient in future.

“Unfortunately, the county council — who are the lead flood authority and are actually managing this process — have not been able to publish the report because Southern Water haven’t provided the evidence that they were asked to do.

“I promised we would have a special meeting of full council to discuss the report once it was published, but here we are six months later and it has still not been published.”

Cllr Barnett went on to read out an open letter addressed to Lawrence Gosden, CEO of Southern Water, saying he wanted his concerns to be placed on record. In it, Cllr Barnett raised a number of issues, including: the sewage leaks at Bulverhythe; the impact of pollution on bathing water; and the company’s communications.

The letter also touched on the company’s recent activity in Alexandra Park and the leaking of sewage into Old Roar Gill Stream in May. This event had been the subject of several public questions during the same meeting.

According to the council, signs warning of this leak were put up at Old Roar Gill, but have since been vandalised or removed by unknown parties. The council is seeking compensation from Southern Water for the damage and disruption caused by the leak.

A spokesman for Southern Water said: “We completely understand the frustration and concern about the issues in Hastings with legacy infrastructure which requires continued investment.

“One of the biggest challenges is the number of what we call ‘misconnections’ where builders have plumbed homes into surface water drains instead of sewers, which means that when someone with a misconnection in their home flushes their loo the waste isn’t going to the sewers to be treated, it is going into storm drains and straight into the environment. Where we are finding these, the council is then ensuring these are put right.

“Our team on the ground are working really hard to fix this. In Hastings, we have to date discovered 92 misconnected properties – around 2500 separate facilities.

“We are also investing in improving our own sewer pipes, with a £5 million project underway which will greatly increase the resilience of the aging sewer at Bulverhythe.

“We have been working closely with the council to try to get to the root causes of these issues and have been regularly updating them on our findings.”