Southern Water boss pledges £9.7m after outage

The boss of Southern Water has said the company "failed" and "let our customers down" after thousands of homes were left without water.

Lawrence Gosden released a statement apologising for the outage, which saw an estimated 58,000 properties affected in parts of Southampton, Eastleigh, Romsey and the New Forest.

The CEO announced plans to spend £9.7m in compensation to customers after the issues at Testwood Water Supply Works in Totton.

Industry regulator Ofwat said the incident was being investigated by the Drinking Water Inspectorate.

On Wednesday, when the outage began, Hampshire County Council leader Nick Adams-King called the disruption "damaging and unacceptable".

"This is the second year in succession that there has been an issue with water supply in the run-up to Christmas," he said.

The disruption also came as households served by Southern Water discovered their bills would rise by 53% over the next five years - the highest increase in the country.

Previously, managing director Tim McMahon said the Testwood site was "very old" and the water outage had been caused during planned works on Tuesday.

It meant customers went without water for two days and relied on emergency water bottle stations.

Many customers reported waiting in queues for bottled water for more than two hours and some priority customers said they did not receive enough water.

Mr Gosden said he promised to "review this incident thoroughly and learn the lessons".

In his statement, said the shortage was the "single biggest water supply incident in our company's history".

The Southern Water CEO said hundreds of Southern Water employees had responded quickly and made a "huge effort".

"But we failed and we let our customers down," he said. "With 58,000 properties left without water, opening just one bottled water station on the first day was far from adequate.

"We had a lot of willing employees ready to staff more stations, but we and our partners failed to obtain sufficient quantities of bottled water.

"This left people queuing for hours, in cars or on foot. This fell far short of what the community needed."

An Ofwat spokesperson said the regulator fully understood the concerns of customers affected by the recent outage, "as they rightly expect reliable supplies and appropriate help when there are interruptions".

They added: "Southern Water are reporting back to us on this and we will then consider if any action falls within the scope of our regulatory powers – and will not hesitate if that is required."

Mr Gosden said vulnerable customers "were poorly served", adding that the firm would be offering customers compensation and would be contacting them in writing within three weeks.

"The new management team at Southern Water is determined to deliver improvements, and a turnaround for the company," he said.

"But we have a lot of ageing infrastructure, like Testwood water works, which needs to be modernised or replaced. It should have been done a long time ago but investment was squeezed as customer bills remained static for more than a decade."

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