Nusrat Ghani, MP for Wealden, has secured an expansion to compensation payments from South East Water to over 400 Wealden residents, as a result of her campaign for direct payments to all Wealden households who suffered the long and disruptive water outages in the run up to Christmas last year.
Following the December 2022 incident, which saw thousands of households across Wealden including the Crowborough, Mayfield, Wadhurst and Buxted areas left without water for several days, Nusrat has been continuously campaigning for their full financial compensation and was most concerned by reports that some residents have either not received compensation or have been told that they were not eligible for it. To assess the scale of this problem, Nusrat launched a dedicated platform on her website for impacted residents to share their concerns and more information. Over 600 submissions have been made, details of which have been shared with South East Water to help with their review of impacted postcodes.
As a direct result of this campaign and Nusrat’s many meetings with the company, South East Water have confirmed that over 430 of the submissions made, including by customers in Crowborough, outer-Crowborough and Mayfield have now been included in the compensation scheme and would be receiving a payment of £75 for the December outage.
In addition to individual compensation pay-outs, South East Water are also distributing a £50,000 Community Fund to support local charities in and around Crowborough. Applications can be made at www.southeastwater.co.uk/crowborough. The closing date for applications is 5pm on 12 May.
Nusrat Ghani said: “I am pleased to have secured payments for more Wealden residents following my persistent campaign for South East Water to sort out their compensation chaos. It is shocking and unacceptable that despite having no water in the run up to Christmas, over 400 Wealden households would have received no compensation whatsoever without my involvement. I would like to encourage all Crowborough charities and community organisations to apply for support from the Community Fund, but there is still more to be done to ensure that Wealden customers do not miss out on individual compensation payments. It is regrettable that some households are still waiting for compensation, and I do hope that more good news will be forthcoming for other Wealden customers as I continue to push for a review of all impacted postcodes.”
