Southern Water presented with contaminated water during heated meeting

representatives of Southern Water met with Wealden District Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee to answer a wide range of questions on its performance and future planning. 

Over almost two hours of debate councillors aired frustrations with the water company’s response to flooding, its efforts to improve its sewer network and its ability to deal with additional development in large parts of the district. 

A particularly eye-catching intervention came from Lib Dem councillor Neil Cleaver, who revealed bottle of brown water he said had been collected from a spill in Hellingly. 

An image of the bottle provided by Cllr Cleaver

Brandishing the bottle, Cllr Cleaver said: “People are paying you to be a service and you are not providing that service.

“Would you like this going down your driveway or in your garden? Would you?!”

Councillors had raised particular concerns about the situation in Hellingly due to a long-term issue with sewage discharges into Station Road. 

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Ward councillor David White (Ind) had asked the water company’s representatives to detail what steps were being taken to address this issue.

He said: “Hellingly Parish Council were told as early as 2019 that the whole system was incapable of taking additional flows without major improvements. We were promised those improvements over a two-year period. 

He added: “I would like to know what improvements you intend to carry out in the short term, because for the last four weeks, since the beginning of the year, the system has not functioned and you have been tankering out the sewage from the pumping station and from the sewer on a daily basis.

“I drove past Station Road this morning and there is still a tanker in the road, emptying the sewer pipes. That cannot be satisfactory, particularly given Station Road floods with raw sewage and we have primary school children walking through sewage. 

“That is not satisfactory in the 21st century and I would like to know what immediate plans Southern Water has to upgrade that system?”

In responding to Cllr White’s question, Southern Water’s team was unable to name specific improvement plans for the area nor give a timeline for any future works.

They attributed this to the ‘complexity’ of the site, but said work was ongoing with the Environment Agency to better understand the causes of system failures in the area.

This response failed to satisfy Cllr White, who said: “Southern Water have had since 2020 at least to come forward with a solution. We are now three years on and nothing has been done and I find that totally unacceptable.”

He added: “Hellingly has been highlighted because I think it epitomises the problem that we have across the whole district, because I think we are granting consents for houses to go into a system that clearly isn’t capable of coping.

“I think we have the same situation in East Hoathly, we have the same situation up at Crowborough, we have the same situation at Uckfield, where we are building houses that frankly we cannot have adequate sewerage for.”

Similar criticisms were raised by council leader Ann Newton (Con), who said: “What action is happening [in Hellingly] now? This has been highlighted obviously by the local councillor and has been going on an awful long time.

“It is completely unacceptable and I am afraid I just couldn’t hear what Southern Water are doing about it. I would like [the representative] to repeat that now if he could and put something in writing afterwards.

“It is, I believe, the worst area of the district. Cllr White mentioned other areas, but it has to be the worst and the one with the [most] longevity.”

During the rest of the meeting, Southern faced questions on its public reporting system and its long term efforts to reduce flooding within the district.

The representatives also confirmed the company was unable to refuse new connections to its system, but said it would continue to seek planning conditions to limit the impact of housing developments. 

This would include conditions intended to reduce or slow surface water draining into its system, the representatives said.

The water company also reiterated its commitment to both provide additional information to WDC when it was consulted on housing development and to do so at an earlier stage of the planning process. 

Even so, this came with a warning from Chris Bending, the council’s Director of Planning, Policy and Environmental Services, who said sewerage arrangements or similar concerns around tankering could likely not be used as reasons to refuse planning permission.