Minutes:
The Chair of the Policy and Performance Advisory Committee Southern Water Panel, Councillor Keene, provided an update on the work of the Panel. Councillor Keene highlighted the following points:
David Murphy, Wastewater Investment Strategy Manager and Sue Cobb, Stakeholder Engagement Manager attended a Panel meeting on the 5 October 2023 and gave a presentation on:
· Southern Water’s operations and business plan for 2025-2030.
· Planned investments.
· Southern Water’s commitment towards the environment and customers, the current picture environmentally and how it intended to achieve 3-star status.
· An overview of storm overflows, resulting spills and solutions
Discussion covered the following areas:
· No dividends had been paid since 2017. The company was bought in 2020 with a subsequent investment of £1.6 billion.
· Pathfinder projects had been established to look at mitigating storm overflows - free, modified water butts/ working with highway authorities to deliver schemes funded by Southern Water/ replacement of poorly maintained sceptic tanks.
· Southern Water as working with other water companies - a new reservoir was planned for the Southeast located in Hampshire and was being developed with Portsmouth Water.
· There were remaining ‘deliverables in the current investment period across-the-board, some were included in the ‘water industry national environment programme’.
· Southern Water recognised that there had been issues over the previous two years with outages, discharges and customer satisfaction, and that its performance was not at the level it, or its customers expected. Southern Water had reached a two-star rating but was working back towards three stars.
· Southern Water anticipated that there would be a significant reduction in storm overflows over the five-year investment period from 2025-2030.
· The Government set targets in its Storm Overflow Discharge Reduction programme which went up to 2050 and all of Southern Water’s spill reporting data was available on its website.
· The Beachboy app had been produced by Southern Water to provide ‘near’ real-time data on storm overflow discharges and the potential impact on bathing water. There were plans to expand the app to inland waters.
· Investigation was needed at treatment works where additional spills, above the capacity that was licenced to serve the population, were needed. These had been built into the next investment period.
· It was not Southern Water’s responsibility to refuse the supply of water and management of wastewater to developers, where planning permission had been granted by the local planning authority.
· Southern Water needed to review the permits for stormwater overflows in order to reduce the number of discharges.
· The Panel would look at engagement with industry and academic experts as well as engaging with residents through town and parish councils.
Southern Water would seek to provide additional information on the following areas:
· An update on how Southern Water promoted and supported community-based schemes and how Southern Water engaged with environmental community groups.
· A metric/management plan with headline figures for the future mix of wastewater/ground water/rivers?
· The ‘spend value’ left in the current investment period?
· Clarification over developer contributions to Southern Water for infrastructure improvements/treatment works provision/upgrade and whether the requirement for this could be strengthened as part of Southern Water’s response to local plans and major developments.
Site visits
Two site visits were offered By Southern Water - The Newhaven Wastewater Treatment Works and Barcombe.
Resolved to note the verbal update on the work of the Panel.