Southern Water slammed for poor environmental performance
The firm has been given the lowest possible rating in a new report
Last updated 5th Oct 2020
Southern Water faces a meeting with the Environment Secretary to explain its environmental performance after receiving the lowest rating possible in a new report.
The firm, which supplies customers across some of Hampshire, was given one star out of four for 2019 by the Environment Agency.
It marks the first time that any company has rated that low in the Environmental Performance Assessment since 2015, and the first time Southern Water has been given that dubious honour since 2013.
Southern Water had been rated three stars, or 'good', as late as 2017 but fell to a two-star 'requiring improvement' grade in 2018 prior to the latest drop.
The report looked into the number of water pollution incidents, including how many of those were serious, along with pollution per km of sewer pipes and compliance with permits.
Southern Water were found to have recorded 430 incidents across their network in 2018/19, their highest since 2011.
Seven of those were rated as serious.
For every 10,000km of sewer, there were 110 incidents, which is almost triple the 39 which occurred last year.
Southern Water's CEO, Ian MacAuley, said the company were 'rightly disappointed' to have fallen in the ratings.
"We are already taking bold steps to set our pollution record straight.
We invested an additional £3.2 million during 2019–20 to improve our ability to find and fix leaks alongside an additional £54 million to improve pollution performance.
Southern Water is a company in transformation and last month we announced our Pollution Incident Reduction Plan, which was shared with the Environment Agency following months of work. We are one of the first organisations in the sector to have analysed the challenge in detail and developed a plan around it. It sets out a plan to reduce pollution incidents to 80 per year by 2025, and zero pollution incidents by 2040.
We are also fully confident this plan and future iterations will allow us to reduce the number of pollution incidents in the imminent future.”
TOP MARKS FOR WESSEX WATER
The water company that covers most of Wiltshire has been ranked as the highest.
Wessex Water achieved an "industry leading" 4 stars.
Severn Trent were the only other water company to be ranked the same.
Rachel Fletcher, Chief Executive at Ofwat said:
"It is good to see two companies, Severn Trent and Wessex Water, improving their performance to reach the highest EPA score, and to see United Utilities demonstrating that the goal of zero serious pollution incidents can be achieved. We expect others to learn from such successes, and our recent price review has also set tougher new performance targets for companies to further reduce pollution incidents.
We all have our part to play, and we will continue to work with government, Environment Agency and the industry to ensure that the sector as a whole can step up and leave the environment in a better place than we find it now."