The chief executive of Southern Water has described the company's response to the 2023 water problems in Rye as "completely unacceptable and inexcusable". Lawrence Godsen was speaking during a meeting of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, January 21 when he was grilled by Hastings and Rye MP Helena Dollimore.
She listed a catalogue of failures by the water company which she described as having the worst record in Britain. She told MPs ten thousand people in and around Rye lost water for up to eight days in 2023.
Referring also to more recent incidents in Hastings and Hampshire, all had exactly the same failures she said. "Bottle water not delivered. Not enough water stations. Traffic gridlock. Unbearable conditions for the vulnerable and elderly. Businesses and schools closed."
"Do you think Southern Water's handling of this incidents was adequate?" she asked.
In reply Lawrence Godsen said he had been chief executive for two and a half years and had been brought in to turn the company round. "It is a completely unacceptable position for there to have been any of these incidents. There were inexcusable levels of duration of the incidents." Pressed further he acknowledged: "Our response has been nowhere good enough."
He explained the Rye water failure was caused by a burst pipe under the railway bridge. "It was an extraordinarily difficult fix. Ideally it would not have happened. It was an extremely difficult operation."
Residents in Rye were compensated at the legal minimum for the outage. In December the government announced that it would be raising the level of compensation water companies would owe customers following supply failure. Residents in Hastings have yet to receive any compensation after the supply was cut to 30,000 people in May 2024. Lawrence Dodsen agreed to review that decision during the select committee meeting.
Helena Dollimore wanted to know whether he took responsibility for the problems. "These happened on your watch after decades of under investment, resulting in crumbling infrastructure. If you accept that your handling of these incidents is not adequate and that those incidents should have never happened in the first place, why did you choose to take a bonus of £160,000 in July last year?”
Mr Godsen explained some of his bonus has been withdrawn and the £160,000 sum was for hitting water quality targets.
You can watch the full exchange here.
