Speeches by Dollimore.

“I need to start by declaring an interest as a customer in Hastings—I lost my supply for five days last May—and as co-chair of the all-party group on water pollution. Lawrence, your company has the worst record of any water company when it comes to water outages, with customers losing their supply sometimes for many day…”

“Would you like to see a different structure and model of ownership in the industry?”

“Do you accept that there is a problem with the structure of the water industry?”

“David, you represent the water industry. Your evidence today suggests that you are somewhat struggling to read the room in terms of the level of anger out there in our constituencies at how water companies have behaved in polluting our seas and failing in their basic services. You have blamed lots of other people for t…”

“Is it your belief that that should be the case, and that all incidents should be covered?”

“David, on your response to the GSS update, with the figures going up and the number of incidents that will be covered going up, you mentioned that, when these changes are made, compensation will be payable in incidents where the interruption lasts 12 hours or more. Is it your understanding that that covers both an outa…”

“That was a pipe you were aware of.”

“Would the incident in Rye have been one like that?”

“Is that across the whole Southern Water area?”

“I have one final question. Through the course of a number of these situations that we have described, it has become apparent to me that perhaps Southern Water does not have a clear sense of exactly where all its pipes are and how often they are maintained. Are you confident that you have a clear sense of where all the …”

“The other aspect of this is that, when we have incidents like the flooding incidents I have described, the first agency that is on the scene is very often our local fire brigade. In the incident in Hastings I have just outlined, I watched firefighters carry people from their flooding homes to get them to safety. I have…”

“And to look at the compensation again.”

“We have talked today about outages. We have talked about sewage. I briefly want to talk about flooding, and when failures of Southern Water’s infrastructure have led to flooding. This has happened a number of times across your region. Sometimes it is a burst main, sometimes it is a blocked culvert. Many incidents have …”

“You have talked about citizen scientists. Many of us have local volunteer groups that have helped to expose the scale of the sewage dumping we have seen. They are volunteers. They go out and test the water. In my own patch, the Clean Water Action Group are currently crowdfunding themselves for additional tests to keep …”

“We have talked about the specifics of sewage incidents and the number of incidents doubling between 2022 and 2023, with sewage discharged 30,000 times. We have talked about the specifics of that and the measures you are taking to end that. I just want to take a step back and think about the impact that this has on our …”

“I have a quick question, because I am conscious of time, on the discussion about the availability of water, particularly in the south-east. You are saying that it is a particularly water-scarce area. There is less rainfall and there are plans to build one reservoir as a result. Is the problem not that no reservoirs hav…”

“By when? Could we look at an announcement in the next month or so?”

“Will you commit to review that decision and to look at giving compensation to the residents of Hastings for that outage?”

“That was under the last Government.”

“Turning now to compensation for these incidents when they happen, following the incident in 2024 in Hastings, no compensation has been paid to residents, including myself. In fact, we have had to pay our water bills for the days when we did not have any water. In the Southampton incident last year, around £30 per 12 ho…”