Why does Havant Borough Council have no confidence in Southern Water?
Councillors agreed unanimously to pass a vote of no confidence
Havant Borough councillors agreed unanimously to pass a vote of no confidence in Southern Water last night, with representatives from across the parties expressing their frustration and mistrust with the company.
Southern Water has suffered a loss of public trust in recent years due to issues with sewage discharge into public bodies of water, allegations of criminal misconduct and fraud amongst high level management and soaring prices.
Councillor Jonathan Hulls submitted the motion for a vote of no confidence before the council as he felt Southern Water had: “consistently failed to meet acceptable standards”.
He said: “I think it's really important for us to draw this line in the sand. Havant Borough Council, just like any other council, doesn't have any powers over Southern Water, but this is the second vote of no confidence in them from a council, as Southampton City Council passed one in September.
“I'm hoping that other councils will pick this up and it could snowball and public pressure and local democratic pressure could be applied, which might make them think twice.”
Baroness Jenny Jones was invited to speak at the council meeting on October 7 to back the no confidence vote.
She said: “I've come today because it's an opportunity to actually highlight the problems there are with Southern Water. The water companies are acting illegally, because they are not doing the job that they were designed for, or the commitment that they've taken on.
“They're dumping sewage and they are actually making life quite miserable for all sorts of people who would like to be able to paddle in streams, or let their dogs go into rivers, or want to swim off a seashore.
“I was at Langstone Quay today, and there were used cotton buds and used lavatory paper all over the quayside that clearly has been washed over from a high tide from sewage. That is just unacceptable.
“In some places where sewage is going into watercourses, ecosystems are being destroyed because they can't cope with the level of pollution. It's not only human faeces and so on, but also a lot of forever chemicals, and things like oestrogen, which are really messing up life cycles of various creatures.”
The Environment Agency found 269 sewage pollution incidents by Southern Water in 2024, 15 of which were dubbed as ‘serious’. So far this year, the company has been fined over £9million for illegal sewage discharge.
Another issue raised by councillors at the meeting was water leaks coming from Southern Water pipelines.
Councillor Hulls said: "Southern Water sent out an email to basically all their customers in Hampshire, proclaiming that they installed nine kilometres of new pipe over the last 18 months.
“So I looked at that, and I Googled how much they've got. Their network is 14,000 kilometres. Modern plastic water pipes should last somewhere between 100 and 150 years. So saying the last 150 years to give them the benefit of doubt, for them to be able to replace all of that before it all starts wearing out, they would have to replace 150 kilometres a year.
“At the rate they're going, it will take them 25,000 years to replace their network. With pipes that last for 150 years.”
“There's millions of litres of water that are being leaked every year. year, year on year,” said Deputy Leader of Havant Borough Council, Netty Shepherd.
“Why aren't they fixing the pipes? That's what Ofwat tasks them to do. That's their job to invest in the network.
“But instead they're spending time and money on this white elephant project, the Havant Thicket Reservoir.”
The Havant Thicket Reservoir project has been widely controversial across the South East of Hampshire. First introduced by Portsmouth Water, the reservoir was originally intended to store water from local chalk streams.
However, Southern Water are now seeking planning permission to use the reservoir to store and blend recycled sewage effluent, and supply it to Portsmouth Water and Southern Water customers.
Many local residents have concerns about the effluent recycling, a process where sewage is put through advanced chemical treatment so it can be reused as drinking water, rather than being discharged into the sea or a river. The process is not currently used in the UK, and if the installation of recycling equipment were to be approved, would be a first of its kind in the country.
However, many say that the use of recycled effluent may damage local ecologies and result in the build up of harmful chemicals in the reservoir.
Cllr Hull said: “If they do get the effluent recycling, we have no confidence in them running their infrastructure in a proper way.
“This is large technology, new technology, being implemented. The reservoir is going to have something like 7 billion litres of water in it. If a single point of failure goes wrong with that effluent recycling, and raw sewage gets pumped into that reservoir, the whole reservoir would have to be emptied, which could take six months.”
“My worry is given their record, they're not going to be spending the time and energy on maintaining that plant in the way they should, because they can't maintain their network of pipes, and that's fairly basic stuff,” said Cllr Shepherd.
“If we have to drain the reservoir, because there's been a spillage into the reservoir, all the chalk streams that feed into it and feed off around it in the catchment area will be polluted.
“All of those rivers feed into Chichester harbour, which is a SSSI. It's got the highest designations in the country. It's a national landscape, you know, area of outstanding natural beauty. And yet, they are putting sewage into it. How is that allowed?”
Although constituents of Havant Borough Council get their water supply from Portsmouth Water, Cllr Shepherd emphasised that there was still a chance that local people would still be drinking water from the reservoir, and worried that as a result, people may turn to drinking bottled water instead.
She said: “No one in the area is going to drink the water out of their taps anymore. That's what's happened in Singapore. People don't drink the water from their taps, they buy bottled water from the supermarket.
“We have enough plastic already. I don't want to see another plastic bottle being produced, so my children could drink water that's safe. I don't want that.
“But people will still have to pay for the water we don’t want. They'll be running that recycling machine all the time, so our bills will be skyrocketing and people will be actually paying on top for drinkable water because they don't trust the water coming out of their taps anymore.”
The cost of the reservoir project has also soared since it was first approved, doubling to over £800million, with £125.9m of that increase as a result of the effluent recycling plans.
Cllr Shepherd said: “The costs are spiralling, and actually, they do not know how much it's going to cost to run. They're already finding that the reservoir itself is actually more challenging to build in than they expected it to.
“This is a 10 year project, so the costs are going to continue to spiral. Who knows where we're going to end up, but I don't think it's going to be under a billion that's for sure. It's just going to keep going up and up and up, and we will all be paying for it. Our bills have already gone up by over 50% in the last year.
“They can't make money after fixing leaks. That gives them not a penny. This is just a financial instrument. It's not about creating water. It's about making money.”
In response to the no confidence vote, the CEO of Southern Water, Lawrence Gosden said: “I’m sorry members went straight to this motion without giving us an opportunity to speak, despite our ongoing engagement with Havant Borough Council.
“The vote outcome is disappointing, but we accept we still have a great deal to prove. I believe Southern Water is changing and that we're on the right track - the only things that will rebuild confidence are delivery and continued dialogue.
“In Havant, that means investing £58 million at Budds Farm Wastewater Treatment Works to reduce spills into Langstone Harbour by more than 30%, alongside wider improvements across our network.
“It also means securing Hampshire's future water supplies through schemes such as water recycling – a process supported by the Environment Agency, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Ofwat. This would involve highly purified water going into the Havant Thicket reservoir before being treated to the same strict UK drinking-water standards as every other public supply.”