On Sunday 14th May many households across the Horsham District woke up to no water. This was following a failure at Hardham pump station which pumps water into local reservoirs. Jeremy Quin, MP for Horsham, has worked consistently since Sunday morning to ensure Southern Water returned water supply to households as quickly as possible and to ensure priority customers had bottled water delivered to them.
One of the key issues with Southern Water’s response was the delay in setting up further bottled stations. Whilst a site was initially opened in Billingshurst, this was insufficient for the needs of the area affected Mr Quin made strong representations for a Horsham station which was opened in the afternoon.
Jeremy said
“I know the water outage was deeply concerning for residents; especially those who are vulnerable, elderly or have young children. It was also deeply concerning for local farmers concerned about livestock.
Since being made aware of the outage I have been pushing Southern Water to fix the problem at pace.
There are serious questions to be asked about the incident itself and Southern Water’s response, particularly the delay in setting up a Horsham bottled water station and the time taken to deliver to customers on the priority list.
These are all points, amongst many, that I will be raising with Southern Water this week. Another key point constituents will want raised is how they will receive compensation and how Southern ensure similar events do not reoccur.
I have launched a survey on my website as I want to ensure I capture residents’ experiences with Southern on this incident and more widely on customer service. I would be grateful if residents could spare a few moments to complete it.”
Throughout the outage Mr Quin has kept constituents up to date with regular posts on his Facebook and website.
These will continue as issues are taken up with Southern Water and the Local Resilience Forum to ensure lessons are learned for the future.
In order to ensure the widest possible range of questions are captured Mr Quin is launching a survey on his website to cover the experience of this outage and water services more widely.
