The House of Commons  Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee is recalling the senior leadership of South East Water for another evidence session - the Committee’s concerns are growing as SEW disputes the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s account of  the circumstances around recent water supply failures at the water company.

The EFRA Committee has today published letters from South East Water’s Chair, Chris Train, after he was invited to respond to damning evidence about the company provided by the Drinking Water Inspectorate last week.

Mr Train’s letter disputes much of the evidence provided by the Inspectorate and says that SEW has commissioned a “rapid in-depth review” to be undertaken by one of the company’s non-executive directors, Caroline Sheridan.who will be supported by SEW’s Strategy and Regulation Director and other members of the SEW team. The company says the review will be complete in April.

The Committee plans to invite the leadership of South East Water and the Inspectorate to a further evidence session in the near future.

The Committee have received two separate pieces of correspondence from South East Wate Chair Chris Train. One is a response to the Committee’s letter to him last week, the other contains the company’s initial assessment of the causes of the Pembury treatment works outage on 29 November.

EFRA Committee Chair and  colleagues "remain deeply sceptical about the company’s version of events to date"

Photo: EFRA Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael MP

EFRA Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael MP said:

“Members of the press and public would be forgiven for seeing Mr Train’s announcement of a further review of the Pembury failure as an attempt to buy themselves time, to hunker down until this storm blows over. They also assert that their review will be ‘independent’. It stretches the meaning of ‘independent’ when their review is to be conducted by a member of its board, supporting by its staff. What was the investigation done by the Drinking Water Inspectorate if it was not an independent review?

“My colleagues and I remain deeply sceptical about the company’s version of events to date, and its Board’s track record of holding the company to account. We would be failing in our duty if we now allowed them without challenge to mark their own homework, let alone on a timescale that will add months to the process.

“We will seek a further evidence session with both the Drinking Water Inspectorate and the company’s Chief Executive and Chair. Ahead of that we shall gather further evidence and allow the current outage affecting customers in areas of Kent and Sussex to pass. I would expect the forthcoming session to include of the non-executive directors as we now see issues of corporate governance affecting the delivery of the company’s services.”

The correspondence, ‘SEW Chair initial response to Pembury outage 19 December’ is watermarked as “confidential”. The Committee had requested a non-watermarked version but it was not provided by South East Water in time. The Committee says it does not regard the contents of this document to be confidential and is therefore publishing with the watermark. The 57 page initial response provided by the company has been redacted.

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