Southern Water has relied for too long on rainfall and good fortune to fill reservoirs, instead of investment and water management.

The current water crisis has not happened overnight but, as usual, Southern Water has done nothing until the last moment and then it did what it always does and blamed customers for being irresponsible.

Surely, water could have been diverted or transferred by tanker long before we reached this point?

But faced with an extra-long spell of hot weather, it has begun finger-wagging in earnest, like a teacher berating naughty pupils for wasting an essential commodity and patronisingly giving us "tips".

Well, I have some tips for Southern Water:

1) As it is unable to manage resources for existing properties, it should immediately block applications for "new builds" in the overcrowded South-East region. (Mr Prescott, Mr Blair and other local authorities, take note).

2) It should cut the number of executives and managers by at least half and invest their salaries, with the revenue raised from ever-increasing bills to long-suffering customers, and build desalinisation plants along the South Coast.

There are billions of gallons of seawater surrounding us. Don't argue desalinisation doesn't work. We know it can and does.

3) Stop talking and start acting. The public does not need more lectures. We pay Southern Water handsomely to do something it consistently fails to do: Manage water resources.

-Brian Hammond, Portslade