Jointly with the leader of Wealden District Council Ann Newton and Chief Executive Trevor Scott, Nusrat Ghani, MP for Wealden, convened a meeting with directors of South East Water to demand answers about the compensation chaos to thousands of Wealden households following the long and disruptive water outages in the run up to Christmas.
Following the December incident, which saw thousands of households across Wealden including the Crowborough, Mayfield and Buxted areas left without water for several days, Nusrat continues to make representations to South East Water for fair compensation to all those impacted by this disruption. However, as reports emerged that some residents have either not received compensation, have been told that they were not eligible for it, or have received less than households in the neighbouring area, Nusrat convened a meeting with South East Water directors to demand answers and explanations.
During the meeting, South East Water have reported that compensation payments are decided based on the length of disruption, and because Tunbridge Wells households were affected for longer than those in Wealden, the levels of compensation are higher. Given the amount of correspondence from Crowborough households getting in touch to report lengthy outages, Nusrat did not deem this answer satisfactory and requested a review of the postcodes impacted by the incident.
There is a dedicated platform on Nusrat’s website www.nusghani.org.uk/south-east-water-compensation-claim, where impacted residents can share their concerns and provide further details about the outage. Each piece of correspondence will be shared with South East Water to help with their review of the compensation levels.
Moreover, some Wealden residents reported to have received communication from South East Water claiming that as a way of saying sorry to those who had minimal impact, a financial contribution would be made to the community following agreement with local MPs. This meeting also served as an opportunity to correct the record and confirm that Nusrat was never involved in any such discussions nor did she give consent to such compensation, and this correspondence was therefore misleading.
Nusrat Ghani said: “South East Water have failed Wealden residents in the run up to Christmas when water supply was disrupted for several days, and they are failing them now by overcomplicating the compensation system and spreading misinformation. I had many exchanges with the Chief Executive of South East Water every day of the December outage, but have not been involved in any discussions regarding community contributions and I continue to push for fair and timely compensation to all households that were affected. I have requested that South East Water correct the misleading statement that has been shared with their customers and I insisted that any community contributions must be made in addition to all individual compensation payments, and must be discussed with the District Council, to ensure the funds are used effectively. I was pleased to learn that my campaign has had some success and that nearly £1m worth of compensation payments has already been distributed to impacted households and businesses, but there is more to be done and I have also requested that a review of all postcodes is conducted so that Wealden customers do not miss out on compensation payments.”
