County Council Leader, Councillor Nick Adams-King said: “While today’s meeting has been in the diary for some time, and we expected to be discussing Southern Water’s long term plans for investment among other things, the timing has meant that we’ve been able to hold the company’s Chief Executive and senior officers to account and to ask very direct and challenging questions in relation to their response to the latest incident over the last 36 hours. In particular, we discussed the location of bottled water locations; the problems of limiting collection to those arriving in cars only; delays in bottled water deliveries; as well as the growth in the number of vulnerable citizens registering for priority delivery, and the concerning delays experienced by this group.
“We understand that problems can and do occur, and that the scale of this particular emergency was significant, but Southern Water must have much better planning for this kind of occurrence. They need a more resilient system of distributing water, be upfront with the public about the impact and what is actually happening on the ground and work with their partners to ensure residents and businesses are helped in a timely and efficient way. Despite our frustrations, I am encouraged at how seriously Southern Water responded to our concerns, accepting that they need to dramatically improve their response to future incidents. We continue to monitor this incident closely and to offer our active support to the company in relation to the current situation, and to help them better prepare in the future.”