Wealden council provides residents with Southern Water watchdog group updates

The group is co-ordinated by Wealden council and includes representatives from more than 20 councils across the southeast, spanning from Folkestone & Hythe to the New Forest.

The stakeholder group’s main objective is to act as a platform for local authorities to come together across political party lines and to hold Southern Water and its regulators to account for the poor quality of waterways and coastline.

The group was set up in the aftermath of a catalogue of issues including flooding, sewerage seeping into people’s homes, gardens and roads, the ongoing problem of discharges into rivers and waterways and the inability to deal with additional development.

Aside from the Southern Water Local Authority Stakeholder Group, there is another smaller Working Group with one or two representatives from each county area, who form a set of priorities and report them back to the main stakeholder group.

Chair of the Southern Water Local Authority Stakeholder group and Wealden councillor Rachel Millward said, “There is constant work happening by the council to hold Southern Water accountable for the poor and unfair service that it is providing to residents. We take this matter very seriously and want residents to see what work we are doing to improve the service and make change.

“As developments occur, it is important that we are transparent and open with our residents. The new web page has been created to provide information of how we are trying to resolve the issue, which includes press releases, letters to and from the government and meetings.”

Residents can access the information via the webpage below https://www.wealden.gov.uk/southern-water-stakeholder-group/