Nusrat Ghani, MP for Sussex Weald, has launched a survey for local residents to share their views and experiences of South East Water’s recent outages.
In early January, there was yet another series of incidents and disruptions to water supply across Sussex Weald, especially in Frant, Eridge, Hellingly, Lower Horsebridge and Crowborough. These were caused by a series of burst water mains in Sussex which meant that service reservoirs have begun to run to very low levels of storage.
Throughout the incident, Nusrat has been in continuous communication with SEW CEO and attended daily Strategic Response Group meetings chaired by DEFRA Minister. She raised issues in all impacted villages and stressed to SEW leaders the importance of having the vulnerable customer registers up to date and unified across stakeholders to ensure that nobody is left behind and water is delivered to them as a priority.
Since the incidents took place, Nusrat has also been asked by the Drinking Water Inspectorate to submit a statement to support their investigation into South East Water.
Nusrat Ghani said: “Sadly, we are all too familiar with South East Water (SEW) letting down their customers and I share everyone’s frustration at the lack of planning and the speed of response when such disruptive events take place. I did all I could to fight for compensation for local residents in the past, and I will continue to fight their corner now. As I may not have been made aware of other locations where issues took place at the time, I have set up a platform on my website where you can let me know whether you were impacted; whether SEW did their job and communicated with you; and whether you think you are owed compensation. While I am thankful for residents who have been in contact with me up to this point, I want to gather as much information as possible so that I can provide the clearest picture possible as to how our community was impacted. Please share your views here: www.nusghani.org.uk/SEWsurvey.”
Picture taken at bottled water station in Mayfield during outages in summer 2023.
