Southern Water slammed for poor environmental performance
The West Sussex-based firm's been given the lowest possible rating in a new report
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 Worthing-based firm, which supplies customers across Sussex, Hampshire and Kent, 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.
The Environment Secretary, George Eustice, said that four out of the nine companies providing water in England - Southern Water, Anglian, Northumbrian and South West Water - were falling short of standards.
“Water companies have a responsibility to act as custodians of the environment and this report for 2019 shows that some are failing to take their obligations seriously. That is not good enough.
“We have the rightly ambitious target in our 25 Year Environment Plan to bring at least three quarters of our waters as close as possible to their natural state as soon as possible and are bringing forward a legally binding target on water quality in the Environment Bill. Our new Environmental Land Management scheme – replacing the EU CAP scheme – will also play a critical part in reducing some of the farming practices which pollute our waters.
“Certain water companies must step up and do better, which is why I will be meeting those who are falling short of our expectations to discuss how we can work together to drive better performance.”
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.”