South East Water Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Helen Grant
Main Page: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)Department Debates - View all Helen Grant's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) on securing this important debate today, and I thank him and our Minister for allowing me to make a few short remarks this morning.
My constituency of Maidstone and The Weald borders my right hon. Friend’s constituency of Tunbridge Wells. Many of my constituents were also completely or substantially without water between 19 December and Christmas day. The main areas affected were Staplehurst, Marden, Cranbrook and Benenden. The problem occurred because of a very large number of leaks and burst pipes following a 20° swing in temperatures from -7° to 13°. The combined effect of a 300% increase in burst pipes led to the loss of 100 million litres of water from the system in 24 hours. In addition to people’s homes and Christmas plans being affected, businesses such as Iden Manor Farm in Staplehurst were unable to supply drinking water to their livestock. Staplehurst’s only pub, the Kings Head, had to close for several days from 20 December to Boxing day. It lost considerable business at a critical time of year.
Sadly, the initial communication response from South East Water was well below standard. There were few updates on websites and people could not get through on emergency telephone lines. Those that did get through were given false timescales for when the water would go back on. In Benenden, people were told that drinking water was available in Pembury, but, as my right hon. Friend knows, Pembury is 13 miles from Benenden, so that was a completely unrealistic suggestion.
However, like my right hon. Friend, I am very grateful to the South East Water engineers and teams on the ground who worked continuously, including on Christmas day and Boxing day—I believe new year’s day, too—to make sure that most people’s water was back on by Christmas day. Thankfully, water levels in my constituency now are back to normal levels for this time of year.
My office has convened a multi-agency meeting with the chief executive of South East Water, Mr David Hinton, on 7 February. Clearly, there are serious questions to be answered and lessons to be learned. We also need to know what its plan of action is, going forward, to avoid a repetition. I want to hear from our Minister today about the availability of compensation for those who suffered financial loss, and I also want to know how we can build a much more resilient water system to deal with the effects of climate change now and in future.